


Enemies With Disregard

by yotoob



Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: BUT SHE PERSISTED, F/F, Oi, thank you show runners for leaving things in an even TRICKIER place than the end of season one, very nearly didn't write this one
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-10
Updated: 2020-02-24
Packaged: 2020-04-24 01:57:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 28,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19163476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yotoob/pseuds/yotoob
Summary: It's probably easier for them to not be in the same room, at least for a while.(THE REMIX)





	1. The Clarity of a Reflection

Rome is not to his tastes.

Konstantin has yet to find a city that is to his tastes, but Rome has the further downside of being warm. Too warm, it stinks in the sunshine. And the people are rude. Here, they think they are better than everyone. In Moscow it is better, because there people think that everyone else is worse than them. It is a subtle difference, but one Konstantin holds close to his heart.

He feels too hot, and irritable, and exposed. 

He doesn’t know why he keeps doing this for Villanelle, but he does.

(He knows exactly why he keeps doing this for Villanelle)

He was very young when he came to associate strangers with threat, and it is an instinct that he maintains, because he hasn’t been killed yet. But that is another reason that he dislikes cities. Too many people to watch.

He longs for his home. He remembers the jetty with a sudden ache, sitting at the end in a peaceful silence, watching the sunset. Dangling string tied to sticks into the water with Irina when she was younger (but not by much). He can remember her thoughtful monologue about the numbers of fish she was about to catch with the clarity of a reflection.

He checks his watch, does some mental calculations, and then rises from his cafe chair. He nods at the server, tosses some change onto the dish, and goes to wait.

….

There are a number of police outside the hotel, and they are in the process of cordoning off the whole street. Konstantin weaves past one officer apologetically just as he is arranging the tape, and he gets waved past with a grunt. 

He walks past the hotel entrance, not adjusting his speed at all, trying to absorb as many details as possible, judging the faces, the equipment, the snatches of conversation…

Happily, his car is just outside the cordon. He clicks it open, checks the back seat, and then settles to wait.

He decides that it is about a fifty fifty chance. 

It is an uncomfortable sensation, waiting. Konstantin is a man who likes to make plans, rather than adapt to circumstance. However, needs must.

He sees her approaching in the car mirror. He watches as she veers towards the car, hand out to check the handle, and then veers away from it at the last second, as she spots him in the driver’s seat. She carries on past the car, nonchalant.

He sighs, thinks about retirement, and then winds down the window.

“Hey. Where are you going?”

Villanelle turns on her heel, and shrugs widely. She has blood on her neck, he sees, only partially wiped away.

“Just walking, what is it to you?”

“You were going to get in my car.”

“No I wasn’t. I was just passing. Not everything is about you.”

“Sure, you were just passing my car, just like I am just sitting here for no reason. Get in the car.”

“Why should I?”

“So you can clean up, for a start.”

Villanelle puts her hands on her hips, and stares at him for a moment. Konstantin gestures vaguely at his neck.

“You have some…. oh just get in the car will you? I have some wet wipes, I think, in the glove compartment.”

Villanelle touches at her own neck briefly, and some tension in her seems to relax, because she slouches over to the car, and tumbles into the back seat.

“Why do you have wet wipes - you have a baby you are looking after?”

Konstantin grunts, and tosses the packet over his shoulder. 

“It feels like that sometimes.”

“Or are you a pervert?”

“Why do perverts need wet wipes? I am not a pervert.”

Villanelle sits forward in the seat, leaning through the gap and adjusting Konstantin’s rear view mirror so she can see herself. She begins wiping down her neck.

“Mmm, sounds like the sort of thing a pervert would say… I should wear red more often, don’t you think? Look, I am probably covered in blood, but you can’t see it at all.”

Konstantin rubs his forehead.

“We should leave.”

Villanelle doesn’t say anything for a moment, and then says quietly “But I wanted to do some sight seeing.” Her voice is odd.

Aha, Konstantin thinks. And she seems… different. Tuned to a slightly different pitch, spaced out and skittish.

“Do you not mean that you will not leave without Eve?”

Villanelle drops her first wet wipe carelessly into Konstantin’s lap, and then pulls out another one. She doesn’t speak for a moment. 

“Eve did not want to come with me. So. I am a free agent.”

“She doesn’t want to come… and you are okay with that?” he asks, watching her reflection carefully.

“I’m fine” Villanelle says flatly, wiping an already clean part of her neck again with busy motions. Outside, another police car drives past them.

He drums his fingers on the bottom of the seating wheel.

“Look, we should go. I can just drive you a bit further away, and then if you really want to, I will let you out. But if you get out here it is very likely you will be spotted, the Italians are slow but they must have cctv footage by now of the entrance to the hotel. And you look very striking in your red outfit, very eye-catching, so you will be recognised.”

Villanelle preens at the compliment, and drops the second wet wipe on his lap. He grunts his annoyance, and tosses it onto the passenger seat with the other one.

“I do look good, don’t I?”

“Yes. Very nice. But I do not have a change of clothes, so would it not be a good idea for you to move a little distance away from the scene of your brutal axe murder?”

Villanelle sighs, and then collapses back into her seat.

“Okay _fine_ , but please do not give me any lectures, I know killing Raymond could have been a bit tidier.”

Konstantin laughs.

“A bit tidier….yes. It could have. Did you forget you had a gun?”

“Shut up” Villanelle mumbles, and then, even when Konstantin hasn’t said anything else, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Konstantin reaches up to adjust his mirror, setting it so he can see her face.

“Do we need to do anything about Eve?”

Villanelle looks out of a window.

“No. She’ll be fine.”

Konstantin watches her for a second longer, and then shrugs, turning the key in the ignition.

Somewhere a couple of streets away, another siren starts wailing.

…..

They leave Rome behind after an hour’s drive. Konstantin waits for Villanelle to say something about stopping, but she doesn’t, so he just keeps driving.

Eventually he has to pull over for fuel. Villanelle gets out of the car, and motions into the store.

“Do you need anything? I’m going to buy some food.”

He shrugs.

“Sure. Whatever they have.”

Villanelle doesn’t move away, just stares past him. After a moment, he glances over his shoulder, and realises she is looking at a highway sign.

“Where are we going?”

Konstantin shrugs one shoulder. 

“Naples. It would be easier to fly from there. Gives you a chance to get changed and clean up.”

Villanelle bites her lip.

“I want to go to Florence. How far away are we from Florence?”

“Far away. Also we have been going in the wrong direction. What is in Florence?”

“Nice things. They have lots of gardens. Architecture. The Medici family built a lot of nice buildings.”

The fuel pump clicks in his hands, and Konstantin rattles it twice.

“Okay, well maybe you can visit another time, when you are not actively on the run? Now. I am going into the shop. Do you want _me_ to buy _you_ food? What would you like?”

Villanelle smiles brightly, and then seems to abruptly lose her joy. She squints against the late afternoon sun, and then shrugs.

“One of everything please” she says mournfully, getting back into the car.

…..

He half expects her to have disappeared by the time he has paid, but she is still there, head tipped back against the headrest as though she is exhausted. He passes her a couple of sandwiches, a bottle of water, and a bag of brightly coloured sweets.

“Here. You will feel better when you eat.”

She mumbles her thanks quietly, but makes no motion to start eating.

Konstantin thinks about telling her that everything will be okay, but who is he to make promises like that? So he starts the car without a word.

…..

They arrive in Naples in the evening. It has a pretty tourist centre, but the outskirts stink of fish and petrol and humanity.

Villanelle makes him drive slowly past a row of boutiques, and she peers out of the window, inspecting each shop window. Eventually she stops him.

“That top and jacket please. And then the slacks from two stores ago, the green ones, you know?”

So out he gets, and pays the extortionate prices. And then he waits outside the car as Villanelle gets dressed.

“You ready?”

“Yes, but I need a hairbrush.”

“Okay well you can source that yourself. We can find somewhere to sleep now. And eat.”

…..

They eat in a small restaurant that overlooks a dimly lit square. 

It occurs to Konstantin that this might be the longest time they have ever spent together. Villanelle pulls bread apart with her fingers and dips it in olive oil, avoiding crusts like a child. Konstantin uses his phone to check flight times.

“We could be on a date, hmm Konstantin? This would be a very nice date, very romantic, we have a little candle, a flower in a glass, all the romantic things.”

“You speak too often with your mouthful, it is a bad habit.”

Villanelle shrugs. “I have many.”

Konstantin returns to his phone.

“There is a flight to London tomorrow. We have to be at the airport by seven thirty.”

“I should have been part of the Medici dynasty.”

Konstantin sighs, and looks at her blankly.

“What?”

“The Medici family. They were a big deal in Florence, very glamorous, very fashionable. Rich. And… they killed people, sometimes. Not all the time, but they definitely did. It was frowned upon but… still socially acceptable. And they had lots of gardens, with tiny hedges. I like tiny hedges.”

Konstantin laughs.

“Oh…kay. Have you been reading a book, by any chance?”

Villanelle shrugs sulkily.

“I saw a documentary.”

Konstantin feels his own eyebrows quiver, and then he returns to his phone.

“Concentrate. Tomorrow. Seven thirty. Okay?”

“Why are we going to London?” she asks flatly. 

Konstantin sits back in his chair, thoughtful.

“My family are there” is what he says, eventually. Villanelle shrugs, looking past him.

“Why am I coming with you?”

“Where else are you going to go?”

Villanelle glares at him, and then takes a gulp of her wine, swallowing too quickly and wincing.

…..

Outside her room, he reminds her again, pointing a stern finger under her nose because she’s not been listening to him all day.

“Seven thirty. Set an alarm.”

She squints at him, leaning on the door frame.

“I will be awake. Do not worry. Seven thirty.”

He grunts, and then turns away, heading for his own room.

“Konstantin?”

“Hhm?”

“When did you… when did you forgive me for shooting you?”

He laughs, an amused splutter that he can’t fully contain, and turns to look at her. Villanelle is inspecting the door frame with pin point intensity. He stares at her, and wonders if he ever will forgive.

“You were doing your job. I am not concerned about forgiveness, but I understand why you did it.”

He watches her as she watches the door frame for a moment longer. And then she says “…and if it wasn’t to do with a job? It was with you. But, what if it wasn’t? What then?”

Konstantin shrugs, unsure about the hypotheticals, and then focuses suddenly.

“Villanelle, why isn’t Eve here?”

Villanelle pouts slightly at nothing, and then bites her lip.

“She didn’t want to come. I thought we could go to Alaska, but… she’d didn’t want to come.”

Konstantin stares at her, aghast.

“So you shot her?”

Villanelle abruptly explodes.

“It was from a distance! And it was with that _tiny_ gun, you could barely shoot a cat with it, it wasn’t a- _and she had stabbed me?_ So I don’t really see why I should-”

Konstantin stares some more. Villanelle stares back at him for a long moment, and then puts her hands on her hips, looking away.

“Okay, so seven thirty tomorrow? I will remember.”

“I think we might need to talk a bit more about this in the morning?”

Villanelle shrugs, and enters her room. “Maybe” she says, closing the door behind her with a click which definitely isn’t a slam.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading
> 
> @yotoob on twitter (hit me up), yotoob on tumblr, yotoob on ko-fi (shh)
> 
> SPONSORED BY REAL TALK this one nearly didn't happen, but if I start it then I have to finish it right? (glow mutuals please do not look at me like thaaaat)
> 
> (oi)
> 
> (bit earlier than 6pm x)


	2. Really Lost

It’s bright.

It’s….bright. Too bright.

What time even is it, did she sleep through her alarm?

And there are… why are people talking?

She screws up her face.

“What… what’s happening?”

There’s some more talking, in a language she doesn’t understand, and then her bed jolts suddenly, and there is engine noise and a pressure on her midriff and then there is pain, everywhere but distant, like she’s been floating in it for years and has become accustomed to it, and-

A voice is talking to her, and she doesn’t understand, but the smooth reassuring tones tell her that this is a medical professional, and she’s in an-

Her bed jolts again, and she clenches her fists involuntarily. And the motion reminds her of gripping an axe, swinging it too hard, and the panic, oh the panic-

She moans.

…..

She wakes up again.

Stillness reigns.

It’s still too bright, but… at least she is still, and there is no one talking to her.

Her stomach feels…. but then everything feels…

Eve opens her eyes.

Jesus _christ_ why must hospital lighting always be this level of eye watering intensity… Eve is squinting, and then lifts her hand to shield her eyes. But then, and unexplained tug-

“Ow, _shit_ ”

There is an end of an IV line in the back of her hand, currently unattached to anything. Eve stares at it.

And then… she stares at it some more.

Her memories, thus far delicate wisps of unexplained sensation, coalesce to something with the density of fudge, as welcome as a heart attack.

The first thing she remembers is the way Raymond’s face bulged and then collapsed under the impact of the axe.

She’s going to vomit.

“Hey- hey? Is anyone there?”

…..

After a series of nurses who do seem determined to not understand any of Eve’s questions, a doctor appears.

“Hello! You are from England? Hello.”

She beams at Eve over her clipboard, and then says “I have spent many holidays in England.”

Eve nods vaguely, and then tries to prop herself up on the bed, before abandoning the idea when pain flares in her midriff.

“I have to contact my boss - can someone make a phone call for me?”

The doctor studies Eve’s chart, ignoring her. 

“You are not a typical gunshot victim. But this is not a typical gunshot, a very small wound and impact area… still, it could have killed you if it had been aimed better, but happily this was not the case! An hour in surgery only, nice and neat. I like England, although your food is not good, I had a sausage once, very not good”

Eve stares at her. The phrase ‘gunshot victim’ bounces around the insides of her brain like a ping pong ball, determined not to settle anywhere.

“Okay. So, when can I go?”

The doctor drums her fingers on the back of the clip board.

“Not yet. You should stay in for a couple of nights, as we rebalance your fluids. And-” she pauses, as though revealing a great surprise. “The police will be here to speak to you tomorrow. Not today unfortunately, they are very busy apparently, there have been a couple of interesting murders in the area.”

Eve feels herself grow cold.

“Oh, um?”

“So it will have to be tomorrow. Try to sleep! Sleep is a cure for most illnesses.”

“Including gun shot wounds?”

The doctor shrugs, indicating that it can’t hurt.

“I will speak to the nurses so you can make some phone calls.”

…..

The next day, the police officers seem primarily occupied with the fact that Eve was trespassing on an architecturally and culturally significant site.

“Tourists like you seem to think that they have a right to access every part of our city, consequence free.”

“I told you, I was lost.”

“You broke down a two hundred year door to get in.”

“…. I was really lost.”

Eve sighs at the impassive glare of the police officer, and rubs her hand over her face.

“Okay, well. I won’t do it again.”

The police officer makes a small note, and then says “So you have no idea who shot you, or why? You were lost, and then you were shot. Someone calls us to say that there has been a shooting in the ruins, an ambulance collects you… and you have no other detail you can give us?”

“No, although my current working theory is that it was a really overzealous security guard.”

“I feel you are not being very helpful, Ms Polastri.”

“Well, _I feel_ like I have been shot, so…”

…..

The thing is - she doesn’t feel like she has been shot.

Eve knows, objectively, that she has. The pain in her side is more tangible now, more understandable. It throbs, low and dangerous. _That is where the bullet hit me_ , Eve thinks stupidly. She sits up slightly, and reaches behind herself to place her hand over the bandages. It’s on her side, apparently it grazed her liver, but nothing more serious than that. 

Just a mild shooting. Up and about in a mere week’s time, antibiotics for a month to prevent infection, a follow up appointment in ten days time to check the healing process.

She remembers arguing with Villanelle. She remembers her absolute _rage_ at discovering that she hadn’t actually needed to kill Raymond, that Villanelle had a gun all along, a small, ridiculous gun, but a gun nevertheless. 

And then suddenly she’s holding the axe again, she can feel the crunching impact against her palms, she can see the way Raymond’s whole face just shifted sideways-

“Oh hey! Wow. Hi. I found you, jesus these nurses do not want to help anyone, and I think half of them think I’m an ebola victim… Hi. How are you? Carolyn said you were shot, that’s a bit fucking rad, as well as awful, obviously.”

Eve gapes her. And then some part of her folds, because suddenly her eyes are filling with tears.

Elena blinks, and then hauls on the strap of her bag, delving her hand in.

“Oh shit, oh shit, I didn’t get training for this, here, wait, I have a tissue, hang on-”

…..

Eve ends up crying for about half an hour, as Elena mutely hands her tissues and shifts awkwardly from one foot to another.

Eve stops when her brain finally manages to get her attention and points out that this isn’t really doing any one any good.

She takes a deep breath. Elena stares at her. Eve wipes her fingertips under her eyes, catching any stray tears. 

“Okay, so we don’t have to talk about any of that, ever.”

Elena nods, scooping all of Eve’s tissues up into her hand and tossing them into the waste.

“No, yeah, sure, we won’t be doing that. So, um, I’m here to tell you we’ll be travelling back to London tomorrow, it’s all been sorted. I’m you’re escort. Carolyn looks like she could peel a toad, but it’s all been sorted. Two gunshot wounds on a team of two - those are not good odds.”

“What? Who- oh. How is Hugo?”

“Not dead. Conscious. Inappropriate - is he always that sleazy or is that the drugs he’s on? I felt like I needed a wash after I left him.”

“No that’s… pretty standard.”

“Gross.”

“Why are you here Elena? I thought you didn’t want to be involved, in case you got killed.”

Elena pulls a face, and then drags a chair over, plonking herself down into it with zero ceremony.

“I’m not involved. I’m here in my actual professional capacity - witness protection programme. Carolyn’s putting you in a safe house. She was extremely insistent.”

That’s…. Eve can’t help her first reaction, which is to roll her eyes.

“Oh come on… since when am I important enough to be threatened?”

Elena stares at her like she is crazy.

“Above my pay grade to know the details, I’m just here in an escort and hand over capacity, but… can I point out that you have literally been shot. Like, you are in hospital, having taken a bullet to the back, so I think your argument may be invalid.”

“But, I’m just… me? No one is going to try and kill me, and I don’t want the whole… oh it is such a rigamarole, the entire thing.”

Elena takes out her phone, taps at it a few times.

“Well, I guess you can refuse the programme, ignoring the fact that I pulled a few strings to get you into one of the _nice_ safe houses, but you definitely can tell Carolyn that yourself, look, here, I have her number.”

Elena proffers the phone out towards Eve, who looks away after a moment.

“Okay, _fine_ , you can take me back to London, let’s use that part at least of the protection funding. I’ll speak to Carolyn myself when I’m back.”

“That’s the spirit” Elena says brightly, clearly happy with whatever Eve decides as long as it doesn’t involve Elena having to directly say no to Carolyn. “Now, are you going to tell me exactly what the fuck is going on? The newspapers were full of two high profile bodies being found in your hotel yesterday. In a bit of a mess.”

Eve shrugs a shoulder, wondering how to play for time, because it was her mess, her mess, she’s the one who swung the axe, even though ‘axe murderer’ sounds as strange a label as ‘gun shot victim’.

It was all Villanelle’s fault, that dickhead, that stupid _dickhead-_

She ignores Elena’s question, by inventing one of her own.

“I haven’t got the slightest handle on the bigger picture to be honest…is Hugo getting witness protection?”

“What, that loser?” Elena scoffs. “No, we’re assuming he just got in the way at some point. Or he tried to come on to someone that he shouldn’t have.”

“That’s fair” Eve says absently, Villanelle’s little moans of pleasure somehow still fresh in her ears. “He probably did.”

…..

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading
> 
> @yotoob on twitter, tumblr, etc
> 
> SPONSORED BY I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT GUN SHOT WOUNDS AND HEALING TIMELINES, DON'T COME FOR ME.
> 
> also sponsored by berry


	3. How Much It Would Cost

She hates planes.

Villanelle doesn’t tell anyone this, but she hates them. It isn’t so much the flying, though the thought of plunging helplessly to her death does not appeal… no. It is the lack of escape routes, the enforced stillness, the knowledge that she has no options. Nowhere to go other than her destination.

No control.

She stretches out her legs restlessly, trying to find a position in economy class that doesn’t make her feel tied up, hamstrung and immobile.

“Would you like a peanut?”

“No.”

Konstantin leans away from her, and tosses a palmful of peanuts into his mouth. Villanelle petulantly spreads her elbows, claiming the single arm rest again.

“Why are we in economy?” she asks, again.

Konstantin grunts.

“This is a tourist flight. Economy class was all there was. Don’t be a snob.”

Across the aisle, a couple of seats up from her, a little girl is kneeling on her seat, looking back at her. Staring at her. 

Villanelle stares back, and she can feel her jaw jut out in a challenge, and great, now she is facing down a five year old.

“Carolyn has decided that we are no longer of use, by the way. That woman will… well. I tried to call her this morning, and that phone is no longer connecting.”

Villanelle shrugs, not breaking eye contact with the little girl. Carolyn is very difficult for her to understand, she cannot get a handle on her motivations or reference points. But she knows that Carolyn wanted her to kill Aaron. Carolyn is not a stupid woman. Villanelle is a known killer. Aaron was an annoying, borderline awful man. It was not hard to put two and two together, no matter how shocked Eve had looked.

Eve-

“I was calling to find out how Eve is.”

Villanelle winces, and then she is furious that her face reacted. _And_ she had only reacted because she was surprised that Konstantin had said Eve’s name just when Villanelle had been thinking of her, but now Konstantin would think-

“Don’t bother.”

Konstantin tosses another peanut in his mouth.

“Of course I bother, I like Eve, she is exceptionally stupid, but I like her. And I heard someone shot her, so naturally I am very worried.”

Villanelle…. something settles over her, like a shadow.

“It was only a tiny gun” she mumbles, casting a quick glare in his direction.

Konstantin chuckles to himself.

“Oh-kay, sure, of course. I am sure Eve will be very understanding.”

“I do not care about Eve any more. So stop talking about her.”

“Yes, this is very not caring, this whole…” he waggles a finger at her “this whole demeanour. Anyway I was following the local news. One female gunshot victim found in Rome historical site. Not critically injured.”

“I do not care” Villanelle says shortly, folding her arms, and looking away from him, directly into the eyes of the little girl. 

“So she’ll be returning to London soon.”

“I do not care.”

“With a new and interesting scar on her body.”

“I do not care.”

“It’ll be there forever. Something you did to her.”

“I do not care.”

“Maybe she’ll start looking for you again.”

“You know that I do not need to defenestrate you completely? All I would need to do is force your head through the window; you would die and your huge gut would provide the airlock so the rest of us would live. Ideal.”

Konstantin looks at her for a long moment, Villanelle can see him in her peripheral vision, as she stares down the child.

And then he looks away from her, tipping the final contents of the bag of peanuts into his mouth.

“I did not know you were a bad flier. I will talk to you when we land.”

Villanelle says nothing, rage prowling in her gut.

“We have things that we need to discuss.”

She fights her own instincts for a moment, clamping down on her urge to pull a face, at the child, at Konstantin, at the world, and then sighs.

She closes her eyes, and tries to sleep.

…..

This is the longest time she has ever spent in Konstantin’s company without deliberately disappearing. 

It’s the longest time Villanelle has spent in anyone’s company since prison. Certainly the longest she’s spent without seriously considering killing the other person, just to release herself from the monotony, the sheer futility of _other people_ , their choices, their endlessly boring details.

Konstantin rubs at his beard beneath his chin when he is bored, or when he is thinking.

It infuriates her.

They book into a hotel; it is shabby, with peeling wallpaper. Cleaning buckets are on show in the front lobby.

“I’m going somewhere.”

Konstantin grunts.

“Where?”

She shrugs.

“Anywhere.”

“Do not cause trouble, we need to keep a low profile.”

He doesn’t tell her to come back, she notices. He knows that she has nowhere else to go.

…..

She finds a strip club.

It’s nearly empty, as she would expect from a Tuesday afternoon. Villanelle orders herself a drink, and then sits in a booth, staring dead eyed at the woman who is offering herself for viewing on stage.

She hates how predictable this is, but she couldn’t find the energy to do anything other than this.

It’s painful, to think about Eve. Villanelle had thought that she’d felt heartbreak before, and that had been blind rage and bloody violence and a righteous, burning anger that had kept her powered for months afterwards, for _years_ …

Eve was different, of course. Villanelle doesn’t love her, now that she knows that Eve doesn’t love her, but it still… she just feels blank. Tired. And directionless.

“Hey”

Villanelle blinks.

“Hey, are you okay? You haven’t moved for a couple of hours.”

A woman is standing in front of her. She obviously works here. Villanelle looks at her body with a detached kind of interest, not even bothering to mask where her gaze lies.

After a moment of letting Villanelle appreciate her body, the woman reaches out to her, and places a hand on her face, cupping her cheek. She looks nothing like Eve.

“You are very young to be here with a broken heart.”

It didn’t even break, Villanelle tells herself. She didn’t love her, not really. She had just said that, for something to say.

“I have money. Are there rooms here? For a private dance?”

Villanelle allows her hand to be taken, and follows the woman up a set of stairs.

She wonders how much it would cost just to be held.

(She didn’t love her at all.)

…..

When Villanelle emerges, evening has fallen like a blanket over London, and the low cloud acts to muffles the emotions in her heart to such an extent that she can barely feel her footsteps against the pavement.

It’s a fifteen minute cab ride back to the hotel. When she arrives, Konstantin is waiting in the lobby.

“Where have you been?”

“Hello.”

Konstantin looks away from her. Something about his manner is different… off somehow.

“I have been making some phone calls. We have more problems than I had initially anticipated.”

Villanelle finds herself shrugging, and it’s not that she doesn’t care, it’s that she thinks she’s lost her capacity to care.

“Okay. Are you going to tell me about the problems, or-?”

Konstantin stares at her for a long time, stares at her as though he is trying to figure something out, make some kind of decision that she is not privy to. 

She stares back for around five seconds, and then eventually holds her arms out from her sides, offering herself up for inspection. Konstantin clears his throat.

“I have to think about my family, do you understand that?”

Villanelle glares at him briefly, because no, how is she supposed to understand that?

“We need to go. I know a place. Go get your things, be down here in five minutes.”

…..

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading
> 
> yotoob on twitter, tumblr, ko-fi...
> 
> (oi)


	4. Bad Grace

“You’re telling me, that _this_ …. is a safe house.”

Elena looks up from the contents of her bag, and glances at Eve, before looking out of the car window as though confirming that they had arrived at their intended destination safely.

It’s an impressive Georgian terrace, on a nice street, in a _nice_ part of London. There are trees on the street, leafy fresh riots of green in the late spring morning. Smart school children walk along the pavements with their parents, neat blazers somehow ridiculous on their tiny bodies.

“Yup” Elena says, before continuing “fuck, I think I might have left the paperwork in the office-”

“But… this is the sort of place that rich politicians live…bankers, you know- and why did we never have access to this sort of safe house when I was working-”

“I could have sworn I put in it here this morning-”

“It’s a huge house-”

“I did tell you that I’d managed to put you in a nice one…. mates rates and all that - oh fuck _there_ it is-”

“Just… this seems excessive for me, when I’m not even in that much danger, I mean-”

“Okay, please shut up because I need to talk you through this.”

Eve rolls her eyes.

“You know that I used to work with you? I’m pretty sure I wrote some of the protocols that you are about to go through with me.” 

“Shut up” Elena says in a sing song voice with a sincere smile, before continuing. “So, it’s not all yours, it’s six separate apartments off the one main front entrance. Other occupants are normal people, unlike you, christ, so don’t go scaring them. There’s a doorman; he’s one of ours. All procedures are as you are familiar with, so I’m just going to pretend I read them all out to you, and you are going to pinky promise to not die, okay? This place is the safest place you can be if you are _sensible_ , and the witness protection agency is not liable for any harm you may come to if you are doing something stupid.”

Eve widens her eyes briefly, and takes the offered keys from Elena’s hands with bad grace.

“Well that wasn’t very professionally delivered.”

“Time to face up to the fact that I am not very professional.”

“That’s awful.”

“You hired me.”

Eve grunts, and leans her head back on the headrest.

“Is Carolyn involved? Is that why I’m in this type of safe house rather than bedsit city?”

“I couldn’t possibly comment” Elena says smoothly, and then waggles her eyebrows three times in a row. Eve snorts.

“Not sure you will be hired by Mi6 anytime soon.”

“Look, I don’t know what Carolyn thinks, but she’s not a stupid woman, and she wouldn’t be doing this if she didn’t think you needed it. Both of you.”

Eve blinks.

“What?”

“You and Niko.”

Eve stares at Elena for a half, uncomprehending second, and then says “Niko isn’t in any danger, also we don’t-”

“Look Eve, I’m gonna let Niko go through his side of things, but you are both in there. It probably won’t be for long, there’s no way they’d install you in a nice apartment like this indefinitely. Just put up with it and enjoy the fancy shower, okay? Your stuff has already arrived. We’re gonna go in together, you ready?”

…..

Elena doesn’t stay for long.

“And you have my phone number, okay? Call me if you want to… I don’t know. Talk about heavy shit, talk about light shit - I don’t mind.”

Eve watches her as she shrugs on her jacket. They’re standing in the hallway, voices low because, even though Niko is a room away, staring at a rerun of Homes under the Hammer, there’s an unspoken rule that they should not be overheard.

“Is Carolyn… did she give you any idea of how long she thought-”

Elena shakes her head, and then looks at Eve.

“Look, this is… one of the places that she puts people when she needs to see them. That’s why the building is like this, high security, in an area where extra police officers are not questioned… she comes to this building. So she must have plans to talk with you, otherwise Carolyn would have left you in a bedsit.”

Eve grimaces. 

“She would have left me in Rome.”

“Yeah, well….just sit tight until she arrives, okay? There’ll be a medic tomorrow who’ll come by to check on your wound. Don’t do anything stupid in the intervening time. I know that is hard, but-”

“Bye, Elena. Thanks.”

Elena reaches out, and gives Eve’s hand a little squeeze of solidarity. When the door shuts as she leaves, Eve somehow feels more crowded.

Just her, Niko, and a precarious silence.

…..

It’s mid afternoon before Niko speaks to her.

“Well?”

Eve grunts awake from her position in the arm chair, because she hadn’t been sleeping, but certainly napping. Besides, rest is important when recovering from bullet wounds.

Niko is standing over her, looking at her. That feels very unreasonable of him.

She scrunches up her face, and leans forward over her knees, looking away from him.

“Jesus Niko… what is it?”

“So you’ve been shot?”

Eve rubs at her temple. 

“Yes, apparently so. Sorry about the…” she waggles a hand at him “-inconvenience. But when I see Carolyn I’ll explain that you and I aren’t… well. If I’m in danger because of how Villanelle reacts to.. oh whatever. I can’t explain. But you aren’t in danger. I’d be very surprised if I was relevant to her anymore, so you definitely are not going to be-”

Niko swallows half the air in the room when he says “Eve, have you even fucking looked at my face or are you just stupid?”

Eve looks at him, affronted, and then-

“Jesus what happened to your face?”

Niko puts his hands on his hips.

“Your girlfriend attacked me in our storage unit.”

Eve’s first reaction is puzzlement.

“Why would she do that… that doesn’t make any sense. Wait, when was this, let me try and place it in the time line-”

“What in the name of _fuck_ is wrong with you?”

“Well look, if I can figure out what she was reacting to then-”

“She wasn’t reacting to anything! She wanted to know how to make shepherd’s pie, and then she attacked me, and you are sitting there wondering about timelines-”

“Jesus stop being so hysterical, things have moved on okay? The situation has changed, and if I can convince Carolyn that you won’t be relevant to her any more then-”

“She killed Gemma.” 

And there goes the other half of the air in the room.

Oh.

“She… why did she do that?”

“Because, she is, _a psychopath_ , that you have brought home, and now she has killed-”

Niko abruptly sits on the couch, head in hands. As Eve stares at him, his shoulders shake once, and then he starts crying. 

Eve… tries to feel something other than irritation.

“I didn’t bring her home, she followed me home.”

“Oh _fuck off_ Eve, you know that you wanted her to chase you, poor boring Eve and her boring life, well this is what it looks like when your life gets exciting, people end up _dead._ ”

“Niko… you understand that she shot me, right? That this trauma isn’t happening to you in a bubble?”

“She suffocated Gemma in a plastic bag whilst I was unconscious on the floor, but sure, tell me all about your gun shot wound that you have already half recovered from.”

“I’m just saying-”

“Have you tried, just, saying, _nothing_ , for fuck’s sake!”

“You started the conversation-”

 _“Well I wish I hadn’t!_ Niko almost roars, and then starts sobbing harder.

Eve stares blankly at him.

It’s not that… she doesn’t know what do to. She knows what to do. She understands what she should do. 

It’s that… she just can’t be bothered to do it. She can’t summon the energy to comfort him. She doesn’t care. 

She was shot. She deserves to have a little bit of time being completely, utterly selfish.

Eve gets up, and walks out of the room. 

There are two bedrooms. Eve chooses the one that is obviously un-lived in, and closes the door behind her. 

She needs her sleep. 

…..

Eve awakens with a start, and the panics, because the nightmare is hard to shake and the walls aren’t familiar.

It’s dark. She hadn’t drawn the curtains, so the orange glow of the street lights from outside fill the room with an eerie sort of warmth.

Eve checks her watch, and swears when she reads the time. 2 am. The least practical time of all.

Below her, the front door opens, and then closes.

Eve is on her feet in a moment, and peers out of the window, hiding herself as best she can.

There is a car double parked outside the house.

And, in the half street lighting…

It can’t be.

But it is. It always is. 

Villanelle is sitting in the passenger seat. 

…..

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! yotoob on twitter / tumblr if you want to come talk
> 
> SPONSORED BY THE INCREDIBLE FANFICS THAT OTHER PEOPLE ARE WRITING, GREAT JOB TEAM
> 
> (can I just say that this chapter would have been produced a lot quicker if SOME PEOPLE didn't randomly demand that I write a whole bunch of fic about [REDACTED] for their own personal use okay bye.)


	5. Chaos Dies

“Well?”

Konstantin grunts at her as he gets back in the car.

“They are fine.”

“Has your wife lost weight?”

Konstantin’s jaw clenches, and he rubs his hands around the steering wheel once.

“Look. We have to be useful. And we have to be useful to a person who has the resources to protect us. For a while. Just for as long as it takes until all the chaos dies down.”

Villanelle looks up at the building Konstantin has just exited. On the top floor, a curtain twitches.

“We shouldn't stay here. Can you drive and talk?”

…..

They end up in a McDonalds.

“Did you know that these will soon no longer exist in England?” she says, pointing a plastic straw at Konstantin. “They will be paper. Or, we will all have to pick up our cups. With our hands. Can you imagine?”

Konstantin grunts, not looking up from his phone. Villanelle reaches out to him with the straw, wondering how close he would let her get…

The tip of the straw is almost touching Konstantin’s nose before he swats it away, slaps his palm flat on the table, and points at her.

“Stop behaving like a child.”

Villanelle pulls a face at him.

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No. Shan’t”

Konstantin looks up to the heavens for a moment, and then says “Do you have any idea how much easier my life would be if I just abandoned you? You do understand that?”

“Bullshiiiit.”

“No.”

“Bullshit” Villanelle says again. She inspects the tip of the paper covered straw, and then slowly inserts it into her own nose and lets it rest there, before looking seriously at Konstantin.

“Do not pretend that you aren’t keeping me as some kind of gamble with yourself. I could be very useful, but you can’t figure out how yet. So you will keep me, because if you lose me you might lose out on some grand opportunity. Please do not give me this shit about how wonderful you are for looking after me, because you and I both know that I am here because you could make some money from me in the future.”

Konstantin stares at her for a moment, face immobile, and then says “And so why are you still here?”

Villanelle shrugs, and selects another straw, slowly inserting it into the other nostril before speaking. She has to slightly tip her head back now, in order to keep them both in place.

“Because I have made a similar gamble with myself. I am waiting to see what happens next, and whatever your plan is might be the most interesting option for me.”

Konstantin growls out a noise, and then says “As you wish. But you do not _need_ to behave like a child all the time.”

Villanelle huffs out of her nose, so that the straws fall away and land on the table in front of her. She sits forwards.

“Then stop, treating me _like a child_ and tell me what the fuck is going on. I am an intelligent person, I am capable of understanding many things, and yet you are still trying to be the ‘mysterious member of the Twelve’, when the situation has clearly moved on. Tell me what is happening, or I swear I will shove this straw into your ear until I find your brain.”

Konstantin stares at her for a long moment, and then says, “Very well. But you cannot just take the information and run off, expecting to be able to fix everything yourself. Things are delicate. We must wait to see how they play out.”

Villanelle shrugs. 

“I cannot promise. And you cannot know for certain what I will do. But I am more likely to stay with you if I am not constantly surrounded by your bullshit, the effluvium is choking me.”

Konstantin says nothing, and just looks at her, as he weighs up his choices. Villanelle sighs, and starts wafting her hand around as though getting rid of a bad smell. Konstantin grunts, and then sweeps his hand across the table, getting rid of the grains of salt before he leans forward on his elbows.

“Very well. Listen. The Twelve.”

Villanelle copies him. “Yes. The Twelve” she copies, mimicking his voice badly. Konstantin ignores this.

“They have been… undergoing some internal wrangling. Leadership issues. There is a faction of about half that-”

“The Six?” Villanelle asks, helpfully. Konstantin rolls his eyes.

“I am not aware of the numbers. Also, you realise that the numbers of the Twelve are not… actually, twelve.”

Villanelle sits back in her chair, eyes wide.

“Shut up.”

“Concentrate.”

“No, but this is big news.”

“Concentrate. Raymond. Remember him?”

“Who?”

“You killed him with an axe.”

“Oh, yes. Him.”

“You killed him with an axe in the most shambolic way possible, by the way… why it was so hard to run away, get rid of him in some more discreet manner-”

Villanelle shrugs. “Circumstances did not allow.”

“Well, Raymond, who you killed so messily, he was not important in the leadership machinery of the Twelve, he was not a man of significance… but he was family - family to the current leaders of the Twelve.”

“Oh” Villanelle says. Family. Eve has killed someone who was… family. To the Twelve. “Oh” she says again. “I would imagine that this is… not good for me.”

“No, it will not be. And I mean… did you not question why such a horrible little man would be used by the Twelve? I like to think that we have a certain style.”

“Mmm” says Villanelle, thinking rapidly. “So, I guess… his family might want a version of revenge?”

“Yes, something like that.”

“Hmm.”

“Yes, indeed” Konstantin snorts, and then says “I suppose now you have that information you would have found a way to just run away from Raymond?”

“Do they…. know that I killed him?”

“Who else is going to have done it?”

“Some… outraged room service attendant? Maybe he made a mess of his room?”

Konstantin ignores her, and goes back to his phone.

“Well. In normal circumstances… you’d be dead within a week. Or there would have been an attempt, at least. But my contacts are telling me that things are moving quickly in the Twelve, there is an internal war, and - well. If the leadership changes, we are in a far better position. _Far_ better. Believe me.”

“You… have connections?”

“Yes” Konstantin says, and then looks up at her. “Connections. And it would be helpful to me if we had a change of leadership, a change of direction, something a little more refined than the swaggering bullshit of recent years… and what is helpful to me will in turn be helpful to you.”

“Will the new leadership care that I killed Raymond?”

“The new leadership would give you a medal for killing Raymond, I’m certain.”

Villanelle’s eyes widen.

“I have never had a medal.”

“But you would like one?”

“Yes.”

“So there we go.” Konstantin says, sitting back in his chair as though all things have been decided. “You will stick with me, we will lie low, hopefully things take their natural course, and we have a different Twelve. One more inclined to value us.”

“And if that doesn’t happen?”

Konstantin shrugs. “We make a different plan.”

“What is the current plan?”

“Carolyn.”

“What about her?”

“She allowed me to stay in her house last time I needed to hide. Hopefully she will be feeling just as accommodating.”

“And me? Where should I go?”

“I’m sure Carolyn can find space in her house. It is a big house. And she will see that we could be useful.”

“Oh” Villanelle says, considering this. 

And then she grins.

“That sounds like fun.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> yotoob on twitter, tumblr, and ko-fi
> 
> SPONSORED BY ALWAYS WEAR SUN SCREEN KIDS


	6. Completely Unusable

The really terrible, awful thing about filo pastry, is that if it is left on the counter for too long, it dries up.

And then the ruddy thing becomes completely unusable. Thus in turn one is forced to throw the stuff away and start again, and frankly no matter how marvellous this pudding turns out to be, it will _not_ have been worth the effort. 

Carolyn nearly swears when the doorbell rings, because she’s only just laid out the second batch of pastry. 

Oh for goodness sake…. she approaches her front door, barely breaking her stride when she sees Konstantin through the glass of the window.

“Yes, hello, what is it?” she snaps at him.

Konstantin nods at her, so obsequious it is almost a bow.

“Hello.”

“Yes, hello. What is it?”

“I am here.”

“I can see that.”

“I have Villanelle with me.”

“Yes I can also see that, she is standing next to you.”

“Hello Carolyn.”

“Hello.”

There is a short silence. Carolyn looks over her shoulder.

“Look, can we get straight to the point here, filo pastry will not wait for us.”

Konstantin clears his throat awkwardly. Villanelle rolls her eyes.

“Carolyn, can we come in? Konstantin wants to talk to you, but it would seem that he needs a bit of time to get himself going.”

Carolyn stands to one side, flapping a hand at them impatiently.

“Yes yes, very well, follow me into the kitchen will you?”

…..

After a brief exchange between Konstantin and Villanelle in a language that Carolyn is not familiar with, Villanelle calls out to her.

“Caroyln, do you mind if I watch some television in your lounge?”

“That’s fine, there’ll probably be some tennis on…” Carolyn returns to her recipe book, trying to relocate her place. She sighs, and then glances at Konstantin.

“Did you know that filo pastry will crisp up if left out like this? I’m on my second pack, it has been a nightmare.”

“Sounds hellish.”

Carolyn sighs again, and then looks at him properly. 

“It has been, rather. Anyway, spit it out. What do you need to talk to me about?”

Konstantin rubs at his neck beneath his chin.

“What, no foreplay? No-”

“No, nothing like that, as you can imagine, filo pastry makes you rather keen to seize the day. Get on with it.”

Konstantin sighs unhappily.

“Very well, I am here to ask… whether I am still useful to you?”

Carolyn snorts, and then smiles fondly at him to show that she doesn’t mean it.

“When have you ever been useful to me?”

“When I handle Villanelle for you. So. Is she still useful?”

Carolyn feels her own eyebrows twist.

“May I remind you that she has killed two of my colleagues, shot and wounded Eve, who I thought she _liked_ mind you, and she did also shoot you. And you ask me if she is useful?”

“Yes.”

“Come here and hold this bit down would you, the edges are terribly fiddly - the recipe really should warn you that you are going to need two clear metres of work space, its just not practical. I’ve had to move the microwave, of all things.”

Konstantin does as instructed, pressing two fat thumbs down onto the indicated area.

“What is this going to be?”

“It’s called M’hanncha in the recipe book - pass me that bowl of filling would you?”

Carolyn works neatly now, spooning the filling in a long line, and then folding as she goes. Konstantin follows obediently behind her, pressing each section down and brushing over it with a bit of water. Clearly this is a two person recipe, Carolyn decides. The publishers reach ought to indicate that, as Ikea does with complicated flat pack.

“You are an exceptionally messy baker, by the way.”

Carolyn nods to herself, concentrating on her spoon.

“Yes I am rather, aren’t I? It is my one area of indulgence, you see. In all other areas I like to think I am neat. Discreet. In this area, however… I am not. Now then. There should be some melted butter in that pan, bring it over… thank you.”

After some brushing, and then some rolling, Carolyn reaches for a baking tray.

“Help yourself to a coffee, by the way.”

Konstantin nods, and flicks on the machine. 

“I will go and ask her, okay?”

“Mmm” Carolyn agrees, finding her glasses from the top of her head and perching them on her nose as Konstantin disappears. She inspects the recipe, unseeing.

It is only thirty seconds worth of alone time, but she finds that it is enough to make a decision. 

“Do you…. I feel I already know the answer, but do you have the equipment needed to make a double shot caramel macchiato?”

Carolyn straightens up, aghast.

“Good lord, no?”

Konstantin grunts, and turns on the tap.

“Then she will have a glass of water.”

Carolyn clears her throat.

“I have made a decision.”

“Yes?” Konstantin grins at her in a manner that she recognises as being his regular ‘disarming’ grin. “Are we useful?”

“You are… but in the manner that a food processor is. Extremely useful when I am in need of a food processor, but highly inconvenient when I don’t need a food processor. Bloody awkward, in fact.”

“Ah.” Konstantin mulls this over, as the coffee machine hisses next to him. “Yes, that would sound about right.”

“However, these are food processing times.”

“Yes, I would imagine they are.”

“But unfortunately I have nowhere to put you. I have an upper limit of people I can just squirrel away, and at the moment I have no more available places-”

Konstantin spreads his arms wide.

“We can stay here. You have an excessive amount of bedrooms, and we will be very good house guests.”

Carolyn comes up short at that, and blinks.

“Have… Villanelle? In my house? As a guest?”

“Until a space becomes available.”

Carolyn stares at Konstantin, and then lowers her voice.

“You have no way of guaranteeing she will behave.”

Konstantin shrugs.

“No. But you do. Same reason I have been behaving so nicely for you.”

Carolyn takes a second to consider this, and then sighs. She switches her attention to her oven, checking the settings before opening the door.

“That is different.”

“Is it?”

“Yes. I am keeping your family safe. I worry that Villanelle’s… fixation with Eve is too erratic to use as any kind of leverage - besides, I did mention that she shot her?”

Konstantin flips a dismissive hand.

“A lover’s quarrel. She will behave, if she knows that you are keeping her somewhere. She is currently dedicating about 75% of her available brain capacity to figuring out how to apologise without actually apologising, it is amusing to watch her struggle with it. Besides… you know what the situation is with the Twelve. And you know which faction is attempting a coup. Villanelle will become… even more useful. Worth keeping.”

“You are asking me to take a very big risk on a very volatile situation.”

“Look… what’s the worst that could happen?”

“She could murder Kenny in his sleep.”

Konstantin raises his eyebrows, and heaves out a huge sigh.

“She would only do that if Kenny suddenly became very interesting to kill…”

“True” Carolyn says, musing on the thought for a moment.

…..

Surprisingly, Villanelle is extremely popular with her dog.

Martin persistently tries to sit on Villanelle, who eyes him with outright suspicion. He attempts to lick her hands when she tries to move him away, and is generally a bit of a disloyal treacherous little shit. Carolyn had always known he was a terrible judge of character, but this…

It’s a lacklustre conversation, about house rules. Konstantin knows the rules already, and Villanelle clearly isn’t listening.

Carolyn changes topic.

“Eve is safe. And recovering.”

It is impressive, Carolyn has to admit, the way that Villanelle’s face doesn’t change at all at the mention of Eve.

“She is with her husband in a safe house.”

That prompts a reaction.

“With her… why is her husband in a safe house with her?”

“Well, he seems to believe he had an encounter with a Russian assassin that resulted in him being knocked unconscious and his friend being suffocated to death. And I believe him. So I am keeping him safe. And may I just say that things become even more complicated if you kill him, it was hard enough to hush up one corpse.”

“Mmm” Villanelle says blandly. “But that still doesn't explain why they are together?”

“Because I do not have endless safe houses.”

Villanelle sighs out of her nose, looking restless.

“And if I promise not to kill him?”

“I will have difficulty assuring him that he is safe, without explaining that I have been in contact with you. Plus everything is… easier to justify this way. Because Eve _does_ need to be in a safe house. The Twelve… are not happy with her.”

Villanelle shrugs, poker face suddenly terrible.

“Why?”

“Because she killed Raymond.”

“No, that was me.”

“No, it wasn’t. There is footage.”

“It’s… fake.”

“No, it isn’t.”

Konstantin explodes with laughter at this point, slapping his hand on the table.

“ _Eve_ killed Raymond? Eve did? Oh… that is so embarrassing for him.”

Villanelle rolls her eyes, looking away from him, down at Martin moodily. Carolyn coughs.

“So you can see why it is important for Eve to be in a safe house. The Twelve will not find it difficult to kill her, if she just went back to her home.”

“Why are you concerned about keeping her alive? She is not a useful member of staff, I would imagine.”

“No, she has exceptionally poor judgement. I’m keeping her alive because I plan on finding a use for you, and I was working under the impression that you would want Eve alive and safe. I felt this might give you some incentive to follow instructions. However if this is no longer the case, then maybe we can find some other way for you to be inclined to stay on side.”

Villanelle glances moodily at Konstantin, and then stares at the table.

“No, fine. Keep her wherever you want.”

“I shall” Carolyn agrees smoothly, and then flicks a hand at Martin.

“Martin, come here, it’s time for your walk.”

Villanelle blinks, and then looks at Carolyn.

“Isn’t your surname Martens?”

Ah. Carolyn nods briskly, and stands up.

“Yes, it is.”

“So his name is…. Martin Martens?”

“Yes. Kenny named him. I did not notice the… name until it was too late.”

“You forgot what your own surname was?”

“I’d rather not… Konstantin, could you please show Villanelle to the loft room?”

Villanelle laughs abruptly. “That’s incredible. You forgot your own name.”

“Towels are in the airing cupboard.”

“Martin Martens… bye Martin Martens, I will miss you and your stupid name-” Villanelle drops her hand towards him, and Martin trots over to her and obediently licks her fingers.

The little shit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading
> 
> yotoob on twitter, tumblr, and ko-fi
> 
> SPONSORED BY STARTLING SURNAME BASED REVELATIONS, THANK YOU LAUREN


	7. Touch Base

“Eve… Eve. It is- god it is _twenty to six_. Why are we… yesterday you were saying that you didn’t think that you were in any danger?”

Eve grips the phone more tightly, peering out of the window again to look up and down the street in the dawn light.

“That was…before I knew that Villanelle was going to be able figure out the location of this safe house in the space of one day.”

“Okay, so… are you sure it was her?”

Eve looks up at the ceiling, hoping for strength, inspiration, anything. “Yes.”

“Did she try and enter the building?”

“No Elena, I probably would have told you that at the start of this conversation - she was in Konstantin’s car, and he did, but I assume he couldn’t get access. He was probably just testing the security systems, seeing if-”

“And so you now think that you are under threat from her?”

“I-” Eve pauses, trying to think. The pain from her gun shot wound in her lower back flares, as though a reminder. “I don’t know. I don’t _think_ so… but she could be trying to kill Niko. And that would - that would not be convenient for me. That would not help the situation.”

Elena doesn’t say anything for a moment, and then says “Niko’s death would be… inconvenient?”

Eve sighs, exasperated. “Oh Elena, you know what I mean, I just… how is she outside this building already?”

Elena sighs back at her, and Eve cannot tell if she is being mocked. “Okay, so why didn’t you press the alarm? Call the number? Why didn’t you do any of the official things? Why have you called me, when you know I am off duty-”

“Because-” Eve pauses, stops. Why has she called Elena and not done anything else? 

“I guess I just… wanted to see what you thought I should do?”

“You know what my answer is Eve, I lose my job if I tell you to do anything other than follow protocol.”

“Yes, but… what if she’s not trying to do anything violent? What if she was just coming to… I don’t know. Touch base?”

Elena snorts.

“Look, if you are saying that Villanelle isn’t there now, I’m going to pass this up to Carolyn, _at a more suitable hour_ , mind you, and then I’m covered and if you two want to create a plan to breach protocol then at least I’ve done my bit, okay? Just sit tight, will you? Sleep, or take a shower, listen to the radio. Medic will be with you around ten, and then Carolyn in the afternoon. Speak to her. Call me if you want to talk about something that isn’t liable to lose me my job.”

…..

Eve does take a shower.

She washes herself carefully, trying to just concentrate on the water, on the warmth of her skin.

Could she have died, when Villanelle shot her? Yes, Eve concedes. Technically. But then… she could have died at any number of points since she first started tracking Villanelle. The threat of it hovers, invasive. 

She trusts Villanelle to not kill her, even when she is pointing a gun at her. And how stupid is that?

…..

The medic performs a per-functionary check up of Eve’s wound, as Eve sits on a kitchen chair and raises the back of her shirt so that the dressing can be re-applied.

Niko is in the kitchen, staring at her. Eve rolls her eyes, and looks away from him.

“Would you like a drink, a coffee?”

“Oh” Eve says, feeling stupid. “Uh, yes please.”

Niko looks pointedly at her, for long enough for Eve to realise that Niko wasn’t actually asking her, and then says “and you, would you like a drink?”

“No, thanks mate, I’ve got to get off soon.” 

Eve closes her eyes, trying to find somewhere to put all her fury.

….. 

It’s after five, when there is a knock on the door.

“Oh, Carolyn… thank you for coming. And you brought your dog, hey buddy…”

The tiny dog growls at her. Eve straightens up quickly, and looks Carolyn in the eye.

A smile ghosts over Carolyn’s face, but it is hardly a reassurance. 

“Hello Eve… shall we go for a walk?”

…..

It isn’t a park in the traditional sense. It’s a green space, about half an acre only, but it feels like the most grass Eve has seen in forever. 

Carolyn had simply ignored the sign that had said ‘Residents Only’, and had swung the heavy gate open.

“Are we allowed to be in here?”

“I have three armed police with me at all times at the moment - apparently the security threat is high so the government system has kicked in. They’ll maintain the perimeter. If someone wants to complain they can speak to them first.” Carolyn strolls over to a bench, sits, and removes the leash from her dog.

“What’s his name again?”

“Martin. I hope you don’t mind my visiting with him, I’ve been rather busy this afternoon indoors, and he needed walking. It’s meant to be Kenny’s job, but he’s forgetful.”

Eve comes to sit next to Carolyn. Martin eyes her briefly with distrust, and then dashes off.

“No, I don’t mind…”

“Also, we have things to discuss that wouldn’t be useful to discuss in front of your husband.”

“Yes… Elena told you that I saw Villanelle outside the house.”

Carolyn nods, and then produces a tupperware box from her bag. She peels open the lid.

“Indeed. I have been baking this afternoon, would you like some?”

Eve blinks, taken by surprise.

“Oh, um, yes… that’s an unusual looking cake.”

Carolyn looks at the contents as though seeing them for the first time.

“Yes, it isn’t a cake, it’s a… well I’m not entirely sure, but it tastes pleasant. There’s rather a lot of filo pastry, and almonds. I’m afraid it’s rather fragile, probably best to just take a fist full and be done with it.”

Eve takes a crumbly sliver, cupping her hand underneath to catch stray crumbs. It tastes vaguely of Christmas.

“So, it would appear that there is significant risk to your life.”

Eve coughs, and icing sugar flies up from her hand. She looks at Carolyn in alarm, and then looks around herself.

“What, now? Is it… is it safe for us to be outside?”

Carolyn smiles quietly, and motions around herself.

“Yes, I would say so, as I mentioned, I do have a security detail now. They are keeping me safe, and in turn you will also be kept safe.”

Martin trots over to them, and places a stick at Eve’s feet. He stares at her. Eve stares back.

“And… you think, that I am in danger…from… Villanelle?”

“Ah, no, I would say not. Certainly not right now.”

Eve reaches down for the stick. Martin picks it up immediately, and then places it at Carolyn’s feet.

“How… how to you know?”

Carolyn reaches down for the stick, and flicks it away. Martin chases after it joyfully. Carolyn sighs.

“Well, when I left my house about twenty minutes ago, Villanelle was napping on my couch.”

Eve pauses, and then feels like she has to reboot her whole brain just to cope with this concept. “She’s on your couch.”

“Yes, she and Konstantin turned up around midday, making the argument that they could be useful. And I’m inclined to agree, though I’d be thrilled to be wrong to be honest, just to get shot of them. But I keep people who I think could be useful.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really… why do you think I am keeping you?”

“I am… useful to you?”

“Not you as yourself. You as a method of achieving some kind of traction with Villanelle; yes.”

Eve sits back in the bench, and laughs vaguely.

“Wow, Carolyn, don’t hold back.” Eve smiles, and then the smile falls off her face when Carolyn turns on the bench, and looks directly at her, facing her whole body towards her.

“I rarely do. I made you an offer, a week ago, in Rome, to continue working with me. To stay in the fold, as it were. You turned it down, for reasons I cannot fathom. You cannot expect me too be sentimental now. I am keeping you because you have the potential to be useful to me. I am keeping Niko… well. I am not sure what use Niko could be, but I am keeping him mainly because I feel he would make rather a fuss if he didn’t feel protected.”

Eve swallows all this stoically, and then says “Yeah. He would.”

Carolyn stares at her for a moment longer, and then nods, looking away.

“You have done an exceptionally good job, by the way. Of falling out of love with your husband. A very practical career choice, is what I would say, if you still had a career.”

Eve doesn’t know what to say to that. “Thank you” is what she settles for, and then takes another bite of pastry.

“Hmm.”

They sit in silence for a few minutes.

“So… do you live near here?”

“Yes, of course, just around the corner, it’s convenient for me to keep my people nearby… why, had you not noticed?”

“Just disorientated I guess. And, um… you said I’m in danger?”

“Oh-” Carolyn tuts at herself, tapping her own forehead with one finger. “Do you know that almost completely slipped my mind. Yes, you are in extreme danger, at the moment, as the leadership of the Twelve appears to have been very attached to Raymond, and they will be aware by now that you killed him with two significant blows to the head. With an axe.”

“Oh” Eve says. 

“Oh” she says, as her chest completely hollows out and the panic hot-wires through every nerve.

She can hear her heartbeat in her ears, too quick and vivid.

She’s going to be arrested. That’s why Carolyn is here with police, they’re found footage and-

“Yes, oh indeed. I’ve seen the footage - you spent quite a long time thinking about it, didn’t you? Probably doesn’t help, too much introspection before you take a man’s face off with an axe.”

The panic reaches her hands, and she drops the rest of the pastry without thinking about it, and clenches her fists together helplessly.

“I… I… I’m sorry, it’s just, he was choking her, so I hit him with an axe, and then she was yelling at me, and I didn’t know what else to do, and so I just… did it.”

Carolyn looks at her for a moment, and then looks away.

“Remarkable. She told you to kill him, and you just… did it.”

“It wasn’t like-”

“Please relax Eve, this response is not a helpful one. I wouldn’t apologise too much, by the way. He was, by all accounts, a horrible little man. However, this does mean that your life is in significant danger from the Twelve, who appear to have been rather fond of him, for all his unpleasant quirks.”

Eve swallows a couple of gulps of air, trying to reposition her brain. “Oh.”

“Yes, such a useful word that, isn’t it? Indicates acknowledgement of the sentence prior, but doesn’t actually move the conversation along a whole lot. Anyway, the good news is that Villanelle is behaving as though she’s been dumped just before prom, but she isn’t an active threat to you, shooting aside. So please refrain from triggering the emergency response if you see her nearby - she doesn’t know where you are staying. And neither does Konstantin.”

“But then why-”

“We should return to the house, shouldn’t we? It looks like rain.”

…..

Carolyn stone walls all of her questions on the short walk back to the safe house, and it is trickier to ask about assassins and immanent death when they are on the pavement, passing other pedestrians regularly.

As they stand on the step of the entrance, Carolyn nods at her cooly. 

“Sit tight. I’ll be in touch. Don’t do anything foolish.”

Eve tries one last final time.

“I still don’t see why Konstantin was here last night.”

Carolyn almost rolls her eyes. The door behind Eve opens.

“Goodness, is it that difficult to figure out? Ah… look, here is your answer.”

There’s another dog. And holding the leash is a girl, a girl that Eve recognises, because-

“Oh. Irina.”

Irina looks at her, and then says “Oh. It’s you. Are you living above us now? Hi Carolyn.”

…..

**Notes for the Chapter:**

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> 
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> 
> SPONSORED BY a million different plots thanks guys.
> 
> (oi)


	8. Innocent Bystander

“Konstantin?”

“Hmm.”

“Konstantin?”

Konstantin grunts again, and flicks a quick glance at her, before looking back down at his sudoku. 

“Shh don’t talk, you will make me lose my thread.”

Villanelle slumps dramatically across the kitchen table. 

“Konstantin it has been three days, I am boreeed.”

“Do a jigsaw then.”

Villanelle growls, and then rests her chin on her forearms, watching the tip of Konstantin’s pen as it hovers indecisively above the newspaper.

“Three” she says. “Three, nine, eight, two, one, three, twelve, sixty two, four, twenty nine-”

Konstantin sighs and sits back in his chair.

“What do you need from me?”

“Entertainment, I am _bored_. It has been three days, I have no activities, nothing to do…”

“Well what did you expect? I told you, we wait, and see if we become useful.”

“But I did not realise that it would mean doing _literally_ nothing. Besides, I am no longer in grave danger from the Twelve, if they know that Eve killed Raymond. I was an innocent bystander. And if I have to stay in this house for much longer then killing Kenny will start to look less boring to me.”

Kenny, who is sitting across from her eating his breakfast, fumbles his spoon. Cereal scatters across the table.

“Wha- you’re joking? Tell me you are joking.”

Villanelle ignores him, and stares at Konstantin. Konstantin sighs, and flicks a stray grain of cereal away. 

“She is joking Kenny. Carolyn will remove Villanelle’s access to Netflix if she kills you.”

Villanelle dead eyes Kenny.

“You’re safe until I run out of Bake Off episodes.”

“And… wait, Bake Off? The cake show?”

Villanelle shrugs at Konstantin.

“You know that I like cake.”

“Whatever. What kind of entertainment were you hoping for?”

“Anything. You won’t like me when I’m bored. I will do something unpredictable. Do you have any more information about the Twelve?”

“No” Konstantin rubs his beard. “I expect an update tonight. Think you can avoid unpredictable until tonight?”

Villanelle sits back in her chair, baring her teeth and pressing the pad of her thumb into her incisor. She thinks.

“I am trying to tell you that the work place environment is limiting my ability to do my job successfully. You should be more concerned.”

Konstantin rolls his eyes.

“Take the damn dog for a walk will you? Do not kill anyone, they’ll trace you back to this house, and then it is bye bye Bake Off.”

…..

She does not like Martin Martens, so smelly they named him twice.

Martin bounces next to Villanelle’s feet as she reaches for his leash. He has been her shadow for three days.

“We go for a little walk, okay Martin? Just to see what we can see. Okay so just stay still, will you stay still, why are you so wriggly, you do not need to lick me all the time, will you stop, oh my god, just, oh my go- okay!”

She straightens up, dog tethered.

Kenny appears.

“Bring him back.”

Villanelle grins at him, and then shrugs.

“Maybe.”

…..

Of course she’ll bring him back, she isn’t a monster.

Villanelle chooses a direction at random. Completely random she tells herself, knowing full well exactly which direction she is going in.

She has a very good sense of direction, she is details orientated when it could be useful to her, _and_ she was paying attention. So of course Villanelle knows how to get back to the safe house that Konstantin’s family are in.

Martin comes to a halt at a lamppost. Villanelle tugs him along. “Come on dog, there will be plenty of opportunities to sniff piss.”

She liked Irina. Irina was not boring, she was very entertaining to talk to. And she thought Villanelle was a good person. _And_ they have not spoken since Villanelle shot her dad in front of her, so they have lots to catch up about.

It is a brisk, fifteen minute walk. The streets are busy, but Villanelle barely sees any of the passersby. They don’t see her. It’s easiest to be invisible in a large city, where people are blind as a self-preservation instinct.

When she arrives at the familiar building, she stops, and rests her hands on her hips, looking upwards.

Now what?

At her feet, Martin yips at her once in enquiry.

“Shh Martin, I am thinking. Be considerate.”

She could just… knock. But there may well be a security guard, and it would probably be a bit too much to expect that Villanelle’s headshot hadn’t been circulated amongst the people protecting Konstantin’s family.

“What should we do Martin?”

Martin yips again. And then he barks again.

An memory strikes Villanelle. There had been dog bowls and leashes at Konstantin’s house…

“Yes good Martin, bark again. Come on dog, talk to me. You want a treat?”

Martin barks again. Villanelle looks up at the house.

“Treat Martin. Treat?”

Martin barks a couple of times, and bounces up at her, scrabbling at her shins.

“Yes, that’s good, good dog… ah”

A face has appears at a window on the ground floor.

It’s Irina.

Villanelle waves casually, and then points at Martin, rolling her eyes as though in apology.

Irina stares at her for a long moment, and then nods. Villanelle gestures over her shoulder, at the gated garden space towards the end of the street. She raises her eyebrows in a question.

Irina nods again.

…..

Irina’s dog is a small, wiry haired little thing. 

“He’s called Thor.”

“Thor?”

“Yes.”

Thor and Martin bark at each other a couple of times, and then spend a good while sniffing each other, judging the respective threat level. Villanelle looks at Irina.

“Do you need to sniff me?”

Irina glares at her.

“No” she says, sitting down on the bench. She lets Thor off the leash. After a moment, Villanelle follows suit.

“How do you like London?”

Irina shrugs, playing at the peeling paintwork on the bench handle next to her.

“It’s okay I guess. I wish I was still in Russia though.”

“Hmm, I don’t. Shitty place.”

“Whatever; I miss my friends.”

“Oh.” Villanelle watches as Martin inspects a leaf, and then trots over to Thor, to co-inspect small shrub.

“It’s your fault that I’m here. You are lucky I didn’t press any of the alarm buttons, we have one in every room.”

Villanelle shrugs. 

“No, it is your dad’s fault, he shouldn’t have gotten mixed up with bad people like me.”

“You shot him.”

“I didn’t kill him though.”

“But you shot him.”

“The people I shoot don’t seem to die, maybe I should take some marksmanship lessons.”

“Maybe you should go fuck yourself.”

Villanelle cranes her head around to stare at Irina, surprised. 

“Ooh” she says, pulling a face. Irina glares moodily at her, before rolling her eyes and looking away.

“Whatever. It is very boring here, I have been very bored.”

“So you are pleased to see me, is what you are saying.”

Irina shrugs, staring at her knees. “A little, I guess.”

“You missed me.”

“Shut up.”

“We had fun together, didn’t we?”

“You held me hostage at gun point, shot my dad in front of me, laughed at my passport photo, and made me watch some random woman blow her own brains out.”

“See, not boring. And I also bought you a burger.”

“I have seen your prison photo. You look like shit. Like a dead Barbie doll.”

Villanelle grunts in acknowledgement.

“Yes.”

Thor brings Irina a stick. Irina reaches down, and flicks it away. Thor chases after it, and Martin follows, a couple of metres behind.

“Your dog has tiny legs.”

“He’s not my dog. How’s school?”

Irina spits her chewing gum out onto the floor, and glances at Villanelle.

“Bad. They are all racists.”

“You need me to kill any of them?”

“No, not right now. Maybe later. I’ll let you know.”

“Okay.”

…..

“Are you dating Eve now?”

They’re walking back to Irina’s house.

“No. She dumped me.”

Irina laughs.

“Oh dear. Poor you.”

“Shut up.”

“Very sad.”

“Shut up.”

Irina snorts, and then tugs Thor away from a lamppost.

“Okay, well. Do you want me to say hi to her from you anyway, or-?”

Villanelle stares at her, for a second, until the pieces fall into place.

“Eve is in this building too?”

Irina nods.

“Yes, did you not know? She is in the flat above us.”

Villanelle stares up at the building.

“That… makes sense, I suppose.”

Irina shrugs. “Sure. Anyway, are you walking the dog tomorrow? You could come here again?”

Villanelle nods slowly, staring up at the windows of the floor above Irina’s apartment.

“Yes, I will do that if I am not busy. And…”

She pauses, considering, and glances down once at Martin.

“Actually, do you think you could let me in to the building? As your guest? I wanted to say a quick hello upstairs, seeing as I’m here, but I’ve not pre-cleared it…”

Irina shrugs.

“Yeah, no problem.”

…..

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> @yotoob on twitter - talk to me if you want?
> 
> SPONSORED BY TOO MANY PLOTS TOO LITTLE TIME
> 
> oi


	9. Details Orientated

It’s one of those rare occasions when Villanelle really wants to be inside someone else’s head.

Usually she is delighted in her own view point, so much more practical than other people’s. She’s details orientated. Pinpoint sharp whilst others are lost in the fog of emotions, of implications, of whatever society tells them they should do for every second of every day…

However, there are moments, when Villanelle really wants to understand her _impact_. Feel it from their soul, not just guess it from the flares of terror behind their eyes. She’s a performer, after all. She craves the _applause_.

She experiences that sudden yearning for external viewing, when she knocks on the door, and Niko opens it.

He glances at her, gives her a nervous half grin of recognition, and then his face falls and his drops his phone.

“Wha-”

Villanelle steps quickly towards him, closes the door, and kicks his phone away from his feet.

He’s gone white.

“What are you- oh. Oh god…”

His brain is catching up to the situation, Villanelle knows. She has seconds. _We have one in every room_ , Irina had said.

There’s an alarm by her elbow. She presses him face first against the other wall, twisting his arm up high behind him. And then she presses a knife to one of his kidneys, digging the point through his clothes until he knows the threat is real.

“You don’t seem like a screamer, but if you do scream I will cut off one of your ears. I am not going to kill you. Do not try to do anything brave, it tends to make a mess.”

Niko grunts, and there is a moment of small struggle in his body which suggests to Villanelle he is thinking about fighting back. She hauls his twisted arm a little higher up his back in response, and Niko yelps in pain.

“I am being serious, I will cut if off in chunks. So please be quiet.”

Niko is breathing heavily. “How are you even here?” he gasps.

“I’m talented.”

“Why are you here? What do you even want from us?” Niko whimpers.

Why is she here? Villanelle is startled to realise that the main answer is _because I was bored._

Reckless, Konstantin would call her. Reckless and stupid.

“Come and sit down, Niko. Let’s get you comfortable.”

…..

She ties him to the kitchen chair.

“So I’m guessing that Eve isn’t here.”

Niko says nothing. Villanelle rolls her eyes, and hauls on the tea towel knot that she is currently tying around his wrists until he grunts in pain.

“It is rude not to respond to questions.”

“No she isn’t here.”

“Yes I already know that, she is unobservant but I think even Eve would notice me tying her husband to a kitchen chair.”

Niko doesn’t say anything.

Villanelle feels the usual pulse of dislike, at this boring, nothing, sweat stain of a man who is somehow married to Eve.

Eve didn’t come to Alaska because of _this man?_ And granted Alaska was maybe not a fully thought through plan, but Eve still walked away from it. Still walked away from her, in order to return to _this man?_

She checks the knots again, and then walks around to face him.

There are still faint marks on his face from the last time she encountered him. But there is a new thin trickle of blood coming from his nose, which must have come from when she slammed him into the wall.

Villanelle stares at his face for a moment, and then sighs, looking away, bored.

“Where is she?”

Niko says nothing. Villanelle crosses the kitchen, opens the cutlery drawer. She picks up the corkscrew, and puts it on the table in front of him.

Niko stares at the implement. 

“I cannot tell if you are trying to be irritating, or heroic. But I’m just making small talk, clearly I’m not going to go chasing after her if I can just wait here for her. So answer me.”

Niko groans.

“She didn’t tell me, she just left. I thought she was maybe going to get some milk… but she’s been longer than I thought.”

 _Longer than I thought…_ Villanelle frowns, and then crosses the room, looking out of the window down at the street.

A small flicker of concern grows in her, because the Twelve are hunting for Eve, and it would be exactly like Eve to be captured on her way to buy some milk.

“When did she leave?”

“About half an hour ago.”

“Where is the shop?”

“Just down the road. She might have stopped to get a coffee though… she wasn’t enjoying being shut up in this house.”

“Mmm” says Villanelle, feeling a pang of sympathy for her. She scans the street again, checks the time, and then spins on her heel.

“And how is your marriage?”

Niko looks between her, the corkscrew, and back again. Villanelle can tell that he is trying to weigh up which answer is least likely to result in her picking up the corkscrew.

“Ah… we’re… we’ve been through a lot, recently.”

Villanelle nods soberly, for all the world as if none of it was her direct fault.

“I tried to kiss your wife. She wouldn’t let me.”

Niko swallows. He’s sweating. A bead of moisture has appeared at his brow.

“She didn’t tell me that.”

Villanelle shrugs. 

“So I shot her.”

“…. she did tell me that.”

Villanelle shrugs, ignoring him. “It’s annoying, isn’t it? When there is clearly a spark between two people, and you both _want_ it, but one person keeps holding back. Because she does want me, Niko. I see it every time she looks at me. And yet she keeps resisting. It is irritating. Opportunities are not endless. And she clearly isn’t resisting because she feels a loyalty to you, so… I don’t understand.”

Niko stares at her. Villanelle moves forward, quickly grabbing the kitchen chair opposite him and dragging it out. He jumps at the noise. Villanelle sits down, and leans forward.

“Explain her to me.”

Niko eyes her cautiously.

“Are you going to… kill me?”

Villanelle shrugs.

“Not now. I need you as an audience. And later… probably also not, I’ve killed a lover’s husband once before and she was _not_ happy. A lot depends on how attached Eve is to the idea of staying boring. You are definitely the boring choice.”

Niko glances at the corkscrew. Villanelle smiles at him, and then motions in a friendly, informal gesture.

“I will still cut your ear off though, so don’t get any ideas. Explain her to me. Explain the logic.”

Niko sighs. 

“I don’t know if she has one anymore. She’s just… reacting, all the time, to the next thing you do.”

Villanelle nods slowly, enjoying the acknowledgement that she is the only thing Eve thinks about.

“Is she angry with me? For shooting her?”

“Y-es?” Niko says cautiously, the bearer of the most obvious bad news in history. Villanelle raises her eyebrows at him, as though he is being extremely dense.

“No, I mean, is she angrier than normal with me?”

Niko looks unhappy, and then says “No. Not excessively so.”

Villanelle nods in satisfaction, and then rubs her chin thoughtfully, copying Konstantin for some reason.

“I don’t understand why she is holding back. Do you think it is a question of motivation? Or have I not been romantic enough?”

Niko stares blankly at her.

“I really don’t know. Maybe because… she doesn’t like you?”

Villanelle scoffs. 

“Sure. Okay. Interesting theory-”

There’s the sound of a key in the lock. Villanelle jumps up.

“- look, she is here. Perfect timing. We can ask her.”

…..

**Notes for the Chapter:**

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> 
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> 
> SPONSORED BY REALLY RATHER STARTLING REACTIONS TO OTHER FIC IN OTHER PLACES, LOVING THE PASSION PEOPLE


	10. A Close Run Thing

Eve has been in the apartment for all of two seconds, before she knows.

She just… _knows_.

Is it a perfume, some tiny part of her brain wonders? Or is it just a different vibration in the air? Some kind of sixth sense, that makes all the hairs on the back of her neck stand up, and her heart beat a skittering double rhythm, readying itself for whatever comes next.

“I know you are here” Eve says out loud, trying to keep her tone steady.

Villanelle’s head appears around the corner, looking entirely innocent. She smiles. “Hi”

Eve refuses to smile back. “Where is Niko?”

Villanelle rolls her eyes, as though Eve always insists on being deeply boring.

“He is here, he is fine. I tied him to a chair and he has a tiny nose bleed, but he is fine.”

“Eve.” Niko’s voice emerges from the kitchen, and it is a eerie, flat tone, as though he is so far beyond what he ever thought he would have to deal with…

Eve glances once at the alarm button, just a couple of feet away, elbow height.

Villanelle shrugs.

“I mean. You can if you want. It’s still live. And then I would leave, obviously. Might have to hurt some police to get out, but I would. But then… well. You’d have to be moved again, and then I’d have to find you again, and then whole thing would be very tedious for both of us.”

“You shot me.”

Villanelle leans against the doorframe. She shrugs. “You were saying unkind things.”

“Oh for goodness-”

“You were saying that I didn’t love you. You don’t get to tell me my feelings, you don’t get to have control over that part of me.”

“I don’t have control over any part of you.”

Villanelle spreads her arms.

“And yet here I am.”

“Are you here to apologise?”

Villanelle laughs, apparently deeply amused.

“Did you apologise to me for stabbing me?”

“No.”

“Well then” Villanelle says, and then beckons her into the kitchen.

Niko is tied to a kitchen chair, just as Villanelle had promised.

He looks levelly at her. When he speaks, there’s a warning note in his voice.

“Eve. Press an alarm.”

“Niko, just let me think for a moment.”

“Yes, shush Niko.” Villanelle motions towards the bag that Eve is still holding, and Eve hands it to her automatically. Villanelle takes the milk out of the bag and puts it in the fridge.

Niko is still looking at her. He speaks slowly.

“Eve, if you press an alarm, then Villanelle leaves.”

Villanelle scoffs to herself.

“You are being a terrible host Niko, can I just say. Eve, do you want a drink?”

“No, I’m fine, thanks.” Eve sighs, and then sits down at the kitchen table.

Niko stares at her, wide eyed.

“Thanks? _Thanks?_ Eve I don’t know if you have fully grasped the situation here, but I am literally tied to a chair here, and she’s been threatening to chop my ear off.”

Villanelle rolls her eyes. 

“Only as small talk Niko, stop being so dramatic. Not everything is about you.”

Eve rubs at her forehead.

“Yeah, Niko, if you could just… why…Villanelle, why are you here? What are you doing? What’s the game?”

Villanelle blows her cheeks out, and then leans against the counter. She widens her eyes briefly.

“Well. I don’t really know. I’m bored. That’s a big part of it. And… I was curious about whether you would apologise to me?”

Eve laughs.

“Are you insane? You shot me, but I’m supposed to apologise to you?”

Villanelle shrugs.

“Yes? You didn’t die. And you stabbed me. Seems to me like I was supposed to get over the stabbing without any kind of apology, so why do you get one from me?”

Eve sighs, sitting back in her chair, suddenly weak.

“Look, I don't see why I’m apologising, you are the one who-”

“You told me, that I didn’t love you.”

Eve falls quiet. Niko, by some miracle of self preservation, manages not to speak.

Villanelle looks away from her, brushing her hand over the kitchen counter slowly as though checking for crumbs. The slowness sets off a slight panic in Eve.

“You told me that I didn’t love you, and then you told me that I didn’t know how to love… and sure. Maybe I don’t. But I am… weak. Weaker. Around you. And… different. In ways I struggle to describe. And if that isn’t love, then fine. Call it what you want. But stop denying me things Eve. Let me have these emotions.”

Eve doesn’t know what to say. Her heart is…. clenched so tight she wonders if she is maintaining a heartbeat at all.

Villanelle meets her eyes again.

“I am different, around you. Let me have that.” She frowns slightly. “And apologise.”

Eve bites her lip.

“I… okay. I am sorry, about that bit.”

Villanelle stares at her, and then looks away abruptly. She huffs at her a little, and her tone changes.

“Okay. Well, I can’t tell if you are just saying that because you don’t want me to chop of Niko’s ear… I should have thought of that problem. I thought I wanted Niko to watch you choose me over him, but I didn’t think of how it would invalidate the reality of anything that you might say to me.”

Eve doesn’t know what to say. When she looks at Villanelle, Villanelle is staring at the corkscrew. She bites her lip, and meets Eve’s eyes.

“Would you still choose me even if I killed Niko?”

Eve stares at her, and then stares at Niko. Niko, who has gone very still. Villanelle continues, and there is a small smile playing around her lips, but only a small one.

“I could. It’d make everything easier. And then, if you chose me, then I’d know.”

“Eve-” Niko whispers.

“Shh” Eve says soothingly. “She doesn’t mean it.”

Villanelle rolls her eyes. “Oh but he doesn’t know that. So he’s worried.”

Eve glares at Villanelle.

“If you kill him, you get nothing from me. Nothing.”

Villanelle shrugs.

“I killed Bill. Remember? And that didn’t stop you from giving me quite a lot of things.”

“This is different.”

“How?” Villanelle sounds genuinely curious. Eve closes her eyes for a second, organising her thoughts.

“Because we didn’t know each other then. But we know each other now. And I’m telling you, if you kill him, then we’re done.”

“So we’re not done now, is what you are saying?”

“No” Eve whispers, throat tight.

Villanelle tips her head back, looks up at the ceiling for a second. She looks tired, all of a sudden. Tired, and … lost.

“God this is so confusing…So what do I get from you for not killing him? Niko stays alive… we aren’t done despite all the wounds… what do I get?”

“This is not a barter situation-”

“It could be-”

“It isn’t-”

“You know… this has worked out really well for you.”

Eve scoffs. “What? How?”

Villanelle smiles quietly at her.

“Because, if you kissed me now, you could tell Niko that you only did it to placate me. You could tell yourself you only did it because you wanted to make me leave. You _had_ to do it.”

Eve can’t breathe.

There is a silence. Niko stares at her. Villanelle stares at her.

She takes a deep breath.

“Would you leave?”

Villanelle shrugs.

“Sure.”

Eve opens her mouth to say something, and then halts. 

These are the necessary steps, her brain calmly explains to her. First you stand up, then you walk over her, then you reach out to her, then you press your mouth to her lips, and then you kiss her. Simple.

You know you want to, her brain says.

You know this is what you think about when you are alone at night, her brain tells her.

“Why can’t you… just leave because I ask you to?”

Villanelle shrugs, looking entirely mournful.

“Because that’s not how the game works, Eve. We both know that.”

Eve stands up.

“Eve..” Niko murmurs. “You know- you know I don’t care if you kiss her. I genuinely don’t. But all of this… it only gets worse if you kiss her.”

Eve stays rooted to the spot.

Villanelle sighs after a second.

“Motivation still not enough Eve? This is like watching you build up the courage to hit Raymond with the axe even though I was _literally_ dying in front of you. You think I would have hesitated for a second if the roles had been reversed? You think that?”

“But that’s because you are different to me” Eve whispers. Villanelle frowns at her.

“What, because I would act decisively if I saw someone I loved getting choked to death? Sure, that’s a really radical outlook.”

“I’m going to kiss you” Eve announces, as though if she gives herself enough prior warning she’ll be able to deal with the seismic shock a bit better.

Villanelle stares at her. Eve realises, with a small flash of triumph, that Villanelle didn’t actually expect her to agree. She flipped the coin, and it has come down the wrong way up.

“Well, no-” Villanelle says, “you shouldn’t. I don’t want you to. This is the worst way for you to kiss me, because how am I supposed to know if you actually mean it?”

“I’m going to kiss you, because then you’ll leave, and then we can start figuring out what happens next.”

Villanelle gestures at her, frustrated.

“See, that doesn’t do anything for my heart Eve, I want you to kiss me because you want to, not some dumb-” 

“But you’re right. Maybe it’s all just a question of motivation.” Eve says this, stepping forward. Villanelle straightens up, facing Eve down. 

“This is a stupid idea, okay, I’m going to go now anyway, I have a dog downstairs that I have to collect-”

“But how do I know that you aren’t going to take Niko’s ear on your way out? As a souvenir?”

“Because I’m not, okay, look, bye Niko.”

Villanelle retreats to the hall, but Eve is following now, and it is almost a sense of victory, but it’s something else as well, something to big to be described, an unravelling and unlocking and understanding all at once-

“Vill- wait.”

“I’ve told you Eve, I don’t want you to kiss me if it is just a way for you to get me out of your house.”

Eve grabs for her hand. Villanelle stills.

“And what if it isn’t? What if it is just what I want to do?”

Villanelle looks down at their hands. When she looks back up at Eve, her eyes are filled with tears.

“I asked you to come with me. We could have gone. But now we are in this stupid situation. So how am I supposed to… know anything?”

Eve stares at her. And then she’s angry again. Because she shot her.

“And how about if I told you I couldn’t give a fuck about how confused you are?”

Villanelle swallows.

Eve pulls on her hand, and then she’s kissing her.

She’s just… Eve’s kissing her.

And god, she’s furious, but it just translates into a moan, and she’s pushing forward into Villanelle until Villanelle has taken a couple of steps back, until her back hits the wall. And Eve just wants… handfuls of her. Armfuls. She wants to hold, and have, and take, and drown in it, drown in the feelings.

Villanelle’s mouth is open, and there’s nothing gentle about this, Eve is holding the back of her neck so hard that it has to hurt, but Villanelle is gasping, and moaning…. her arms are wrapping around Eve’s shoulders, pulling Eve against her. And Eve could die, she could explode, she could fly, she doesn’t know, she doesn’t _know…_

She doesn’t know what she is doing.

Villanelle bites at her lower lip, and then Eve bites back harder… _harder_ \- until Villanelle hisses, and pushes Eve away from her.

They stand, eyes locked. Eve can barely hear anything other than her own shuddering breath.

Villanelle presses two fingers to her lips, where there is no blood, but Eve can tell it was a close run thing.

She glares at Eve.

“This was… the worst apology I have ever received.”

Eve swallows.

Villanelle takes her hand, and presses it against the alarm button for her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Kudos and comments are great! 
> 
> @yotoob on twitter
> 
> SPONSORED BY BETTY AND JODIE PLEASE SPEAK TO EACH OTHER AT THE EMMY AWARDS


	11. As a Body

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GOSH hello again, does anyone remember where we got up to?

Elena brings her own snacks and coffee to meetings, when she can.

She learnt that from Eve. No one is going to accommodate for your needs, or even notice that you are on the verge of having a blood sugar crisis during a lunch time meeting, and certainly _no-one_ is going to buy you lunch.

Elena does Eve’s job now. She’s not sure how she slipped sideways into that role, but now that Eve is no longer in the office, Elena manages all the things that Eve managed. If life had been more predictable, Eve would still be her boss, occupying the office that Bill used to grumble from. 

But life isn’t predictable, and a dour woman with no sense of humour occupies Bill’s old office. Patricia is a stickler for tidy desks, and she has a severe haircut which screams ‘young professional from the nineties’ and little else.

Patricia, shockingly, doesn’t like Elena. Elena can’t tell if it is the trail of crumbs she leaves behind her, or a kind of low key racism, but she is very much not flavour of the month. 

It might be professional jealously though. 

Because Carolyn Martens, ( _the_ Carolyn Martens) has decided that she, Elena Felton, is her go to when it comes to weird, off the book, low key body snatching, safe house work.

“Elena”

Elena clutches at the hand set in excitement, because she, Elena Felton, is receiving direct calls from Carolyn Martens.

“Hello, speaking.”

“This is Carolyn.”

“Yes, I know, I just like pretending that I don’t recognise your voice because-”

“I’ve just spoken to Patricia, she's agreed to free you up for the afternoon. Something has come up, and I require your assistance.”

“Oh, that’s great, I’m literally dying of boredom.”

“Be outside in twenty minutes. I’m sending a car.”

….

She, Elena Felton, is in a car, sent by Carolyn Martens, because Carolyn Martens cannot function without her.

Elena’s straight, but if this car took her straight to a hotel, and it turned out that Carolyn Marten’s required her assistance in the task of achieving a discreet orgasm or twelve, Elena isn’t going to get too hung up on labels.

It’s not a hotel though. It’s Eve’s safe house.

Elena waits on the pavement for a moment, unsure if she is just supposed to go up the steps and knock. But then a car across the street winds down a window. 

“Elena. Thanks for coming. Can we have a quick word first?”

It’s a nice car. Elena wonders about asking whether she’s allowed to eat the mini flapjacks she’s got hidden in her bag, but decides that the answer is probably no.

…..

“So what exactly is my role here? In this meeting, exactly?”

Carolyn looks slightly startled when she turns to Elena, as though she thought that things were obvious.

“To lend things an air of professionalism. Eve’s husband believes that he’s just survived a serious incident. We need to look like we’re taking this seriously.”

“Oh”, says Elena, simultaneously confused and delighted. “So I’m here…”

“As a body, yes” Carolyn interrupts. “And you helped set Niko up in this place, before Eve arrived. So he’ll view you as a friendly face. And I trust you to keep quiet about this situation.”

Elena chooses to ignore the ‘as a body’ comment, and focus instead on the ‘I trust you’. 

Carolyn glances at her, before picking up her bag, and reaching for the car door.

“Any questions?”

Elena shrugs, and sure, she may lose her job if all this comes out, but at least she’s being herself and having fun.

“No. Let’s go.”

“Good.”

…..

It’s a masterclass in gas lighting, Elena realises.

She almost feels sorry for Niko, in fact she probably should… but. Well. Elena has chosen her side in this, and it is on the side of the morally bankrupt, so she’s just going to have to _embrace it_.

“So, to review, there was an unannounced knock on the door, and you opened it, even though all the procedures of this building tells you that guests should only be greeted if you have received a clearance notification from the front desk-”

“Yes but-”

“So you allowed Villanelle to gain access-”

“Yes but-”

“Deliberately putting yourself and your wife in danger.”

“But I don’t see how she even got access to the building?”

“We’re focused on your actions here Niko. Elena, show him the protocols.”

Elena opens her file at random, and is about to start pointing at a sheet, when Niko holds up a hand.

“I know what the protocols are. I opened the door because I thought it must be Eve, and I didn’t expect the security on this building to be so weak.”

Carolyn sighs heavily, and clasps her hands in front of her.

“It is everyone’s responsibility to secure this building. _Everyone_ has their part to play.”

“Yes I understand that-”

“And frankly if you aren’t willing to following even the most basic procedures, then I think we have to reconsider whether it is worth our allocating you a safe house space-”

Niko gapes at Carolyn, and then points a finger at Eve, who is sitting next to him, as blank faced as Elena has ever seen her.

“ _She_ made out with Villanelle in front of me whilst I’m tied to a kitchen chair, but I’m the one breaching basic procedures?”

Elena struggles to not react to this. Eve meets her eye once, and then looks away, towards Carolyn.

Carolyn doesn’t even hesitate.

“Eve’s training meant that she did what she had to do in order to get a dangerous assassin out of this building without any further bloodshed - something that she managed very successfully it would seem to me.”

Niko stares at her. Carolyn continues.

“It was a very different situation, and one that required extremely careful handling.”

Elena…. wonders if she could actually give herself an aneurysm just by trying to hold her face still in the light of this most flagrant of bullshit. 

Niko looks from Carolyn, to Elena, to Eve, as though trying to find the smallest shred of sanity.

“You walked by the alarms, you sat there and flirted with her, you followed her when she was leaving, you basically reached third base in the corridor…”

Eve juts her jaw out slightly, and then says “You still have both your ears, don’t you?”

There is a long pause. And then Niko turns away from her.

“Are we just giving Villanelle a free pass for murdering Jemma? Is that no longer relevant either, so long as I have both my ears?”

Carolyn clears her throat. “No, Villanelle will be brought to justice, of course. As soon as we catch her. But you will have noticed that she is a bit difficult to pin down. However, one of the positives we can take away from this whole affair is that we can downgrade the threat level that Villanelle poses to you.”

Niko’s eyebrows raise almost comically high on his forehead, and he sits back in his chair, faking relief.

“Oh we can, can we?”

“Yes” agrees Carolyn, smiling beatifically. “She was here, with ample opportunity to kill you, and she passed on the opportunity. And, from the interaction as you have recounted, it would seem that her obsession with Eve is now just with Eve, not with her relationship with you. You have become, it would seem, irrelevant to her, Mr Polastri. Congratulations. This is good news. Elena is going to take you through the process of moving you back into your home, with some extra security features added, of course.”

Niko doesn’t say anything for a moment, and then he coughs.

“And Eve? What about Eve?”

“…and Eve-” Carolyn continues, for all the world as though Niko interrupted her “-she will be staying here. She is under threat from more quarters than just Villanelle, unfortunately. You will be going home alone.”

“Good” says Niko after a moment, bullishly.

 _Bit of a dick_ , Elena silently concludes.

….

Elena and Carolyn leave Niko packing his bags.

“So, tomorrow morning at nine?” is the last thing that Elena cautiously suggests, as Niko rams things into his suitcase.

“Fine” he says shortly.

Elena widens her eyes, and shares a look with Eve, out in the corridor.

“Will you be alright tonight?” she whispers. Eve nods.

“Yeah, it’s fine… and I have all these helpful alarms to press, so-”

Elena snorts, and then looks seriously at Eve.

“Third base?”

Eve grimaces.

“Okay, we barely touched second base, also what even are the base parameters?”

“Depends which system you are using, Fahrenheit or Celsius-”

“It was just to get her-”

“No Eve, it wasn’t, it was just because you wanted to make out with your hot murder nemesis girlfriend, please stop asking me to wade through the bullshit.”

Eve stares at her for a moment, and then shrugs. “It wasn’t… oh I don’t know any more. I’ve lost my mind.” 

Elena shrugs back, copying. “Okay, well, I gotta go, Carolyn’s waiting for me in the car.”

Eve gives her a half smile. “Don’t pretend you aren’t loving this.”

Elena grins.

“Oh, every goddamn second.”

….. 

Carolyn had said that her car would give her a ride back to the offices, and that’s why Elena gets back into the vehicle without a second thought.

It’s one of those cars which is practically a conference room on wheels, and there are seats facing both the front and rear and of the car.

Elena is slightly disconcerted to realise that there is an extra person in the car, sitting on one of the seats opposite her.

She’s even more disconcerted to realise that it is Villanelle.

There is a dog in her arms. It yips out a small enquiry.

“Umm…” Elena says after staring at Villanelle for three seconds, and then looking at Carolyn, who is busy on her phone. Carolyn peers over her glasses at her, mildly puzzled. She presses a button on the arm rest next to her, and the car moves off.

“I’m going to have the car drop off Villanelle after we’ve taken you back to the office… oh, wait, have you not met? Elena, this is Villanelle. Villanelle, Elena; she used to work with Eve. Oh and this is Martin.”

Martin barks at the sound of his name, and Villanelle shushes him absently, and then smiles politely at Elena.

“Hello.”

“Uhhh… hi. Sorry. Are we arresting you?”

Villanelle looks at Carolyn. Carolyn rolls her eyes.

“Yes, eventually, of course… just not this moment.”

“I’m being useful” Villanelle supplies helpfully. “Walking Carolyn’s dog, that sort of thing.”

“That… makes no sense at all, but okay- wait. Carolyn, your dog is called Martin Martens?”

Villanelle grins widely at Elena, as Carolyn huffs out a sigh and puts her phone in her bag. She pinches at the bridge of her nose.

“I can see that you and Villanelle are going to get on well.”

“You used to work with Eve?” Villanelle asks politely. Elena looks back at her, almost completely off balance, but you know. She’s powering through.

“Yeah. I used to bring her croissants in the morning.”

Villanelle’s face seems to change minutely, and then she says, half whispers “She likes croissants?”

Elena is having some kind of out of body experience. She nods slowly. Villanelle leans forward slightly.

“Would you like to come out for a drink with me tonight? I would like to be friends.”

There’s no protocol for this. Elena looks at Carolyn for guidance. Carolyn waves a hand dismissively.

“Please do Elena, then maybe I can watch News Night for once.”

“Well uh…” Elena looks between Carolyn and Villanelle. “That… would be… wait, on a scale of one to ten how likely are you to kill me?”

Villanelle shrugs. 

“Very small; you are Eve’s friend?”

“Yes” supplies Elena, and then elaborates, “Best friend. Only friend. She’d be… very angry if anything happened to me.”

Villanelle shrugs again, as though nothing of consequence is being discussed.

“Exactly. Zero chance.” She pets at Martin’s head, and then looks at Elena again, clearly trying to figure out how to ask an awkward question.

“So, um, what type of croissant?”

…..

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SPONSORED BY LENGTHY AND UNEXPLAINED PAUSES WITH NO APOLOGIES PROVIDED
> 
> hi guys, i love you. Please go and read 'Every Rose' by Fixy.
> 
> xoxo
> 
> @yotoob on twitter (sorry tumblr I don't do you anymore, rip)


	12. A Type

It turns out that Elena isn’t free on that exact evening, but is free for the following night, so that is why, the next morning, Villanelle is cornering Kenny at the bottom of the stairs to ask for local advice.

“Just somewhere low key but nice for drinks, you know, but I don’t want to go too far. Not a pub, I will never understand- a bar. A nice local bar for nice drinks? Any suggestions?”

Kenny stares at her (honestly why is this boy always staring at her as if she is the most surprising thing in the room, she has been on his couch for the last five days…) and then says “Are you… going on a date with Elena?”

Villanelle snorts at him, and then laughs.

“What? No? Are you crazy, not everything I do is about dating, why can I not decide to make a friend-”

Kenny starts speaking over her, spluttering in his embarrassment. “But, she’s single, and attractive, and she has incredible hair, and I just thought that-”

Villanelle feels her face shift, and she glares at him.

“What… what are you talking about?”

Kenny has gone bright red.

“Eve and I, we had discussed that… we had kind of half concluded that you maybe had a type… Eve had said that… and well I just thought-” Kenny trails off miserably, and then reaches out to run his fingers along the dado rail, as though inspecting for dust. 

Villanelle decides to go for honesty rather than murder, because Kenny has been very accommodating about Villanelle deliberately eating all of his favourite cereal.

“I tend to go for older women Kenny” she says soothingly, enjoying the way that Kenny manages to find an extra layer of blush.

“Oh” he says.

There’s an awkward pause, which Villanelle finds deeply enjoyable.

Kenny coughs. “Uh. Yeah, uh, I can understand that.”

“So I do have a type, and it is not Elena, but thank you for paying me so much attention” Villanelle says politely, because she is slightly delighted to have discovered that Eve committed some time to figuring out Villanelle’s sexual preferences.

Kenny shrugs, still not making eye contact with anything other than the bannister. “Yeah, well, we were trying to find you. Uh. Stop you from… you know… all the murder. So we tried to figure out everything about you.”

Villanelle smiles at him, showing him her teeth.

“And how would you say your search for me is going?”

Kenny glances once at her, and then nods vaguely.

“I would say that it is going… okay. A solid okay.” 

Villanelle lets the silence stretch for a moment, and then breaks it with a shrug, relaxing her stance.

“Anyway, I’m not trying to date Elena. Or kill her. Just normal drinks. Talking about normal things. I want to know more about the things that Eve likes, for a start.”

Kenny nods, still looking vaguely uncomfortable. Villanelle realises.

“…Would you like to go on a date with Elena? Is that what is happening?”

“Oh, uh, I thought, I mean, we did have a thing, but when we worked together, and Elena thought that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea, so I thought when we weren’t working together, we might, you know, but then, we didn’t, so…” Kenny trails off miserably. Villanelle looks at him, wondering how it must be to be shy, and then shrugs.

“Okay - I don’t really understand that but okay. Ask her out? But not tonight. Tell me a nice place to have a drink. Somewhere around here please. Somewhere close.”

…..

Kenny’s suggestion turns out to be a good one.

Turners is a neat, glass fronted bar, with black tiles on the walls and large, ornately framed mirrors that bounce the warm lighting around the space endlessly. The bar is busy, but not so busy that Villanelle can’t get her preferred choice of seat at the window. It’s location is good, just a couple of minutes from the nearest tube station in one direction, and about five minutes walk from the impressive buildings at the other end of the street, among which is Eve’s safe house.

Villanelle has arrived slightly early, and orders from the well kept man at the bar, who smiles professionally at her and lets her know that he’ll bring her drink over. 

Villanelle sits, and waits, and after five minutes sees Elena heading in her direction down the street. She gives a little wave, which Elena cautiously returns.

After one drink, and fifteen minutes of stilted conversation, Elena seems to relax, and really lean into the fact that she is out for a friendly drink with an international assassin, and after that the conversation becomes much smoother.

Elena is easy to talk to, Villanelle is pleased to discover. She seems to carry with her a blasé sense of complete disinterest in the rights and wrongs of any situation, choosing the practical, self protectionist course of action at any given point. This self protectionist instinct probably extends to Elena’s family and close friends, but stops short of anything boring like altruism.

This makes a certain amount of sense, Villanelle concludes, because a person probably has to have a reasonable amount of moral indifference to be able to in Elena’s line of work. (And Eve’s line of work, Villanelle remembers happily) The frequent contact with people scarred by crimes that require safe houses would probably be exhausting for anyone with highly tuned moral empathy. Luckily for Elena and Eve, their moral empathy seems to be usefully stunted.

Happily, Elena seems largely unconcerned by the rigours of her job, and just dismisses it with an “ugh, boring” when Villanelle politely tries to ask about it. This is good, because it means Villanelle can drop the pretence of being at all interested in Elena’s life, and instead focus on Eve. Elena laughs at her.

“I cannot _believe_ that you got the horn for your nemesis, ugh, so jealous of that, it must have been like all your kinky dreams coming true, seriously I would die if ‘Evil Hugh Jackman’ decided to pursue me across Europe, literally die.”

“Hugh Jackman?”

“Mmm, I feel like he would sing passionately a lot about important things, you know, like my tits.”

Elena gestures vaguely at her own tits as though these things should be obvious. Villanelle smiles blandly in the face of this baffling heterosexuality, and gets back to the point.

“Tell me about Eve’s favourite things.”

Elena gives her a serious look.

“Okay, well, number one; not murder. Definitely not murder of work colleagues.”

Villanelle nods impatiently to show she has understood.

“Yes yes, you have already said.”

“Yeah, but I really feel you might have deliberately missed that point.”

“What else? Croissants? She likes pastries?”

“Yeah, I guess? I mean, show me the woman who doesn’t? But yeah, almond croissants, black coffee with one sugar, blue berry muffins, uh, beer, red wine if she has to pretend to be classier than she is, salt and vinegar crisps, Fleetwood Mac, um, she goes swimming now and then I think, uh, she likes people who file their paperwork on time… the colour black? And uh, oh those wrist pad things that people who use a mouse a lot at work like to use. She had two of those.”

Villanelle stares at Elena for a moment. 

“Okay, most of that is not very helpful… what’s her favourite perfume?”

“I don’t know.”

“Favourite chocolate?”

“Uh, not sure.”

“Flowers?”

“Uh, yeah? Pretty ones? I don’t know.”

“I thought you were her friend?”

“I am, but like… work friend? You know? We didn’t really… we stayed in the work areas of conversation, if you see what I mean. We mainly bonded over how much we all hated Frank, those were good days.”

Villanelle brightens.

“Oh, so she’ll be pleased I killed him?”

Elena shrugs.

“Probably a mark in the positive column overall, but then that was after you had royally shat the bed by killing Bill, so-”

“Shat the bed?”

“Fucked up.”

“Oh.”

Elena takes a sip of her drink, and looks out of the window.

“Look, all I really know was that Eve was incredibly fucking bored at work, bored at home, and was probably ready to set fire to her own life at any given moment. That’s why she lost her job, because she stopped playing by the rules. So, you can put that in your positive column if you want, because you’ve fucked up her life pretty well, for all that she’ll complain about it.”

Villanelle absorbs all of this in silence, and then says “You didn’t mention shepherds pie.”

“Why… why would I mention shepherds pie?”

“Something she likes.”

“Does she?” Elena looks confused.

“She fed it to me once. She likes shepherds pie. Niko had made it for her.”

Elena screws up her face, understanding dawning. 

“Oh, no. No no. Eve doesn’t really like Niko’s cooking, he’s always cooking stodgy, filling food, good for winter maybe, but she would complain about it a lot. She used to swap her lunches with Bill pretty often, his wife would make sushi sometimes but Bill wanted the stodge.”

Villanelle gazes at her, face in neutral.

“She doesn’t like shepherds pie.”

“I mean, she’s probably indifferent at best.”

Villanelle remembers threatening Niko at knife point for his shepherds pie recipe, and looks out of the window, disconsolate. 

“Wow. _Wow_. Do you ever feel like the universe is just completely against you?”

“Yeah, every time Hugh Jackman does another movie in which he isn’t allowed to sing _once_. Injustice.”

“No, I mean, do you ever feel like you are trying _really_ hard, you know, just doing everything you can to make something work out for you, and then it turns out you were trying hard in the wrong direction all alon-”

Villanelle stops talking, and stares at a man walking past the window, tracking his path past the bar and further up the street, heading in the direction of Eve’s safe house.

 _Shit._

She’s on her feet and heading out of the door before her brain can figure out what’s wrong.

…..

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SPONSORED BY I GUESS I'M WRITING AGAIN, NOBODY MOVE
> 
> @yotoob on twitter, kofi
> 
> thank you for reading!


	13. Plaster

She recognises the man.

Villanelle does not meet many people twice. But this man… she had seen him talking to Konstantin once, once when Villanelle had turned up to a prearranged meeting thirty minutes early and had lurked, unseen, wondering what she could discover.

She had only seen him for two minutes, but that was back when Konstantin was heavily involved in the Twelve, and now this man, who looks muscular and threatening and is walking with purpose directly towards Eve’s safe house… it doesn’t take a genius. 

Villanelle doesn’t believe in coincidences.

He’s thirty metres ahead of her. Villanelle balances the need to catch up to him, with the need to not be noticed by him, with the need to find a dark side street in order to shove him, unseen in the settling gloom of the city night-

“Hello, jesus, you move fast when you want to-”

Elena.

“Elena, what the fuck?”

“I could ask you the same question-”

“What are you doing?”

“I thought we were going to another bar?”

Villanelle gestures meaningfully at the man up ahead, now only twenty metres ahead of them, pointing out the threat. Elena follows the gesture, unseeing.

“Oh, but we can’t go to Eve’s, that’d be against the protocols, Carolyn might murder me, although believe me I would pay money to see that house visit-”

Fifteen metres, although Villanelle now doesn’t need to worry about being quiet, because the man wouldn’t expect to be attacked by someone loudly talking to their friend. Villanelle glances behind her, down the empty street, and then targets an alleyway up ahead.

“Christ, can we slow down a bit, I have heels on-”

“No. Keep talking.”

“What?”

Ten metres.

“Did you and Kenny used to date?”

Elena laughs suddenly.

“Oh, fuck, is that what he’s told you? Well, we had one hook up, a drunken fumble if you like, but it wasn’t exactly earth shattering, although points for effort you understand, and then suddenly he’s being all “I’m not sure its a good idea to mix work with romance”, and I’m like, ‘fuck uh me too babe-”

Five metres. Villanelle slows down slightly, so that she will be overtaking the man at the same point that they collectively pass an alley. The man doesn’t look around, even though their footsteps must clearly be audible by now. Villanelle adjusts her voice, using her English accent, although she knows that she can’t emulate Elena’s London accent very well.

“And did he listen to you?”

“Well, yeah, he never mentioned it again… what’s with the voice?”

They’re passing the man. Villanelle sticks her hand out abruptly, and makes contact with a point just underneath his jaw, leaning her body weight into him, and the high contact point combined with the sudden change in direction has him stumbling into the darkness. Villanelle follows him in, kicking a heavy boot at the back of his knee but missing slightly, so he doesn't collapse but instead staggers sideways. He hits the wall, but he is upright almost immediately. 

He has a gun, and Villanelle doesn’t.

“Oi, what the fuck Vil?”

Villanelle has an Elena, but Elena is not going to be particularly useful.

“Vil, what are you- oh jesus-”

The man has his gun out, and Villanelle punches his face once, but it’s just a glancing blow, not enough to make him drop it. He lifts his foot up and rams it at her midriff, half throwing her against the opposite alley wall. He swipes through the air with the butt of his gun, clearly keen to avoid the noise of using it, but Villanelle half ducks out of the way, and he misses.

“Jesus, what the fuck!” Elena squawks helpfully, and she’s fumbling in her bag for her phone. 

Villanelle spins on her heel, grabs a metal bin lid, and smacks it into the man’s face, knocking him off balance. Her lack of momentum means it isn’t a devastating blow, but it sends him reeling backwards for a half second, and he drops the gun. Villanelle steps on it quickly, and she flicks it back towards Elena.

“Take it!”

“What the fuck! What the fuck?? - what the fuck am I supposed to do with-”

The man comes up elbow first, and the impact glances off Villanelle’s mouth and jaw, shaking her, and she staggers back against the wall. The man grunts, spits out some blood, and then Villanelle is pressed up against the wall, the rough brick work scraping against her back as he leans a forearm against her throat.

Elena is swearing, and trying to pick up the gun from the black shadows next to the industrial bins. Villanelle remembers Raymond choking her, but this man clearly isn’t as familiar with this method of murder, and stands too close to her, allowing Villanelle to stamp her foot down hard on the softer tissue on the side of his shin. It causes his pressure to falter, and when Villanelle rams her knee up hard between his legs, he doubles over.

“What the fuck, what the- should I shoot him?”

“No” Villanelle gasps out, not fancying her chances against Elena and a gun pointed down a dark alleyway with shaking hands. She grips the metal bin lid again, and this time she brings it down rim first on the back of his head, with a force just shy of deadly.

The man collapses, and stays still.

Villanelle spits, and then delves into his pockets, finding a wallet of money, a set of keys, and a phone.

She thrusts the phone at Elena, and croaks out some instructions.

“Here, use this, call the police, say the owner of this phone just tried to attack you, you fought him off, he’s taken a blow to the back of the head in an alley, give them the address but don’t give them your name… and say you are leaving because you are scared he might have friends.”

“What, why-”

“Just, do it, I’ll explain later. You sound like a local for a start, it’s more convincing.”

“What?”

“Just… will you just-” Villanelle suddenly runs out of air, and raises a hand up to her mouth, where she can taste blood.

“Okay, shit, okay, hang on-”

Villanelle looks through the wallet, ignores the money, and instead extracts all the cards.

She pockets them, and the keys, and tosses the wallet on the ground next to him.

Her throat is hurting, and her jaw feels tender, Villanelle can imagine the bruise that’ll bloom. When she clenches her fist, she hisses at a flare of pain from her knuckles, and unpleasant accompaniment to the ache from her midriff.

Elena finishes the call. Villanelle nods at her, and takes the phone back from her. She extracts the sim card after a moment and, tosses it on the man’s back. She keeps the handset, sliding it into a pocket.

“We have to move.”

“Yeah no shit sherlock, what in the name of fuck-”

“The Twelve know where Eve’s safe house is.”

Elena stares at her, uncomprehending.

“No they don’t? How do you know that?”

Villanelle points at the man at the floor.

“He works for the Twelve. He was heading to Eve’s house with a gun. What else do you-”

She stops abruptly, when a throb of pain explodes across her throat for a moment. She swallows harshly.

“… trust me. Please. We must go to Eve’s house.”

“Fuck… fuck… okay, but I’m definitely going to get fired at some point and I’m definitely coming to you for compensation.”

…..

Elena has a pass that gets them access to the safe house with no questions asked (although its just another confirmation for Villanelle that this safe house isn’t actually that safe). 

Villanelle winces her way up the stairs, and she’s _fine_ , obviously, she’s had worse, but that doesn’t mean that she wouldn’t appreciate a sit down and maybe a glass of water.

Elena knocks on the door.

“Who is it?”

“Eve, it’s me. Elena.”

There’s a small “what the fuck” from the other side of the door, and then the sound of multiple locks being opened. Villanelle leans against the corridor wall, hand rubbing at her throat.

The door opens. Villanelle watches as Elena grins nervously.

“So, uh, don’t be mad.”

Villanelle can hear Eve groan, and she smiles despite herself. “What did you do?”

“Firstly, we have reason to believe that this place isn’t safe any more for you. We need to move you. I’m going to get on it now, but it’s going to take a couple of hours at _least_ , and I’m going to need to call Carolyn, which is not going to be a walk in the park at this time of night.”

“Shit, shit… for fuck’s sake, how do you even-”

“Secondly, uh, Villanelle is here and needs a plaster or three, do you think we could come in?”

Villanelle recognises this as her cue, and steps into sight. She maintains a millisecond of bravado, but that melts into sheepishness when she remembers the mess of her face.

Eve stares at her.

“Hi Eve” Villanelle croaks, and then tries for a smile. “Would I be able to have a glass of water please?”

…..

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> @yotoob on twitter, ko fi,
> 
> SPONSORED BY jeez idk, the moon?


	14. Hooligan

Eve is sharply conscious of the state of her kitchen.

This is a nice kitchen, with highly polished counters and neat, elegant cupboards lining the sides. The central table is slightly too big for the room, which means that people would find it difficult to pass each other without bumping hips. In a busy family setting, Eve thinks she would end up insisting upon a one way circular system, but obviously this isn’t something she has to think about now.

The safe house kitchen was immaculate when Eve had arrived, but now after twelve hours of Niko not being there to quietly tidy up after her, the kitchen is now a bit of a mess. The kitchen detritus of every day life dots the counters in an completely absent pattern. And that would probably have been fine, except for the fact that Eve had boldly decided at 2pm that she would cook a curry, before deciding at 7pm, with equal boldness, that she would just abandon it and order pizza instead. 

Alarming, turmeric coloured sauces sit in pans, cold and unheeded. The papery shells of onions lay scattered on the counter _above_ the bin, and would it have been so hard Eve, really?

Eve thinks that the mess probably hasn’t been noticed. Elena and Villanelle have, by all accounts, just been in a fist fight with an assassin (although Eve isn’t entirely convinced of Elena’s helpful role). They probably aren’t too concerned about the state of Eve’s kitchen.

“Sorry about the mess” she mumbles half heartedly anyway. 

“I’ll be with you in two minutes Eve, just let me get a handle on this… jesus why is my phone so useless-” Elena is trying to access her work accounts via her phone, and it seems to be slow going. She sits down at the kitchen table, and swears a couple of times, seemingly as automatic as breathing.

Villanelle has her back to Eve, and she is inspecting her face in the glass door of the microwave. There is a blaze of red across her jaw that implies at least one connected blow, but Villanelle is focusing on the damage to her mouth, where her lip has split.

Eve finds that she wants to inspect it too, because it looks nasty and she doesn’t trust Villanelle to look after it properly. 

“There is a better lit mirror in the bathroom.”

“Mmm” says Villanelle, not making any move. 

It’s annoyance now, that’s making her fingers twitch. Eve pours a glass of water, swallowing several questions and a couple of complaints as she does so. She hands Villanelle the glass in a way that is just shy of churlish, trying to balance the fact that Villanelle apparently just saved her from being killed by an assassin with the fact that Eve really _was_ enjoying a quiet night to herself, and she's by now definitely missed the end of Strictly Come Dancing.

Villanelle takes the glass without a word, and swallows a couple of quick gulps. Something about the way Villanelle’s throat works through the effort suggests that she’s in pain.

Eve tears her eyes away.

“So, uh, what just happened?”

Elena drops her hands with a sigh, breaking eye contact with her phone for a moment.

“Oh my god, well, Villanelle and I were out for a drink, obviously”

“Obviously” Eve repeats, aware that this is the least obvious scenario in the known universe.

“And I’m sitting there having a nice time, but then Villanelle just dashes off, and initially I just thought she was being rude? But then she was marching away, so I was following her, and then we’re talking, this and that you know, and then she just _shoves_ this guy this sideways, and I’m like ‘oh my god?’ And then they’re _fighting_ , and I’m like ‘oh my god!’…. so I’m just standing there cause I don’t know what to do-“

Villanelle coughs. “You were not very helpful.”

Elena glares briefly at her. “Well, I wasn’t actively unhelpful. I didn’t get training for a fist fight.”

This is all rather a lot, Eve finds. She sits down on a chair, and motions at Elena to continue, who does so happily.

“So _anyway_ , he has a gun all of a sudden, so side note he was definitely coming to kill you. And then punches are being thrown, and Villanelle smacks him with a bin lid, like, _tthwack_ , but he kicks her, and then he’s trying to throttle her, and I’m like _’oh my god!_ … and now I have the gun?? Absolute chaos, as you can imagine. But thank fuck V manages to knee him in the balls, and then he’s on the floor, and so Villanelle takes him _out_ with a bin lid to the back of the head. And then, you know. Fight over.” Elena breathes out dramatically, as though she’s just relived the whole thing.

___Someone had been coming to kill her. It is a half unbelievable thought, even after all this time. Eve struggles with the same impulse she feels about identity theft warning, the general sense that it’ll never happen to her, always someone else…_ _ _

___She mets Villanelle’s eyes after half a second. Villanelle looks away, turning back to her reflection in the microwave._ _ _

___“Did you kill him?”_ _ _

___Villanelle shifts slightly on her feet, but doesn’t look at Eve._ _ _

___“No. I just knocked him out. I was precise. I hope that when the emergency services get to him, they start asking questions, and he might answer them. I get the impression that the Twelve are struggling at the moment, if they are using hopeless assassins like him.”_ _ _

___Eve doesn’t say anything, processing this. Villanelle seems to have a new idea, and glances at her, looking sour._ _ _

___“Were you worried about him? Are you about to give me a morality lecture about endangering the life of the man who was on his way to kill you? You think I should have let him choke me some more?”_ _ _

___Eve shakes her head, and then stands up, opening up another drawer. She finds two aspirin, and slides them across the counter towards Villanelle._ _ _

___“Here… your throat looks sore.”_ _ _

___Eve leaves her fingers near the pills. She… doesn’t know what she is asking for, but she doesn’t get it, when Villanelle takes the pills all the while meticulously avoiding touching Eve._ _ _

___Elena clears her throat, and returns to her phone._ _ _

___It’s with a small shock that Eve remembers that it was only two days ago that Niko was tied to the chair that Elena is currently occupying._ _ _

___She doesn’t even know what is a normal emotional response is any more._ _ _

___Villanelle swallows the tablets quickly, and then takes the would be assassin’s phone out of her pocket. She presses at the screen a couple of times, and then presses and holds on the power button. It doesn’t respond._ _ _

___“Do you think Kenny could do something with this?”_ _ _

___Elena shrugs, and then looks at Eve, who shrugs back._ _ _

___“What do you expect Kenny to do?”_ _ _

___“Well, the assassin didn’t seem to be very good at his job… he might have stored numbers on here. Which could give us a route to reach the Twelve.”_ _ _

___“Why are you trying to reach the Twelve… are you trying to get your job back? Sorry, I’m not sure where you and Konstantin fit in to the big picture any more-”_ _ _

___Villanelle rolls her eyes briefly._ _ _

___“I want to reach them to stop them from wanting to kill you? Although I don’t know why, you are very ungrateful about the whole thing-”_ _ _

___Elena interrupts at this point, clearly just realising something._ _ _

___“I’m sorry, I’ve just realised… why are we keeping Eve safe from the Twelve? I thought we were keeping Eve safe from _you_ , although that’s- ”_ _ _

___Villanelle smiles briefly, and then winces, touching gingerly at her cut lip. She gestures at Eve with her free hand._ _ _

___“The Twelve were fond of Raymond, and Eve took Raymond’s face off with an axe.”_ _ _

___Eve feels her gut drop, because Elena didn’t know that, _Elena didn’t know that-_ “I’m going to kill you one day.”_ _ _

___Villanelle shrugs, seemingly unconcerned by her threat. “I’ll take my chances.”_ _ _

___“Wait, you killed the Raymond guy?”_ _ _

___Eve pushes both hands through her hair, exasperated because this is just _not the point_ , and ends the gesture with an angry shrug. “Look, the circumstances required… well actually they fucking didn’t, _this_ asshole had a gun the whole time-”_ _ _

___Villanelle sighs shortly. “Look, Eve, you really can’t keep getting hung up on the details-”_ _ _

___“You know, the second I start to think; ‘she just saved my life, so she can’t be all bad’, you always have to turn up and be relentlessly-”_ _ _

___“Eve, you really don’t have to be this dramatic about this, Raymond wasn’t a nice man-”_ _ _

___“That doesn’t mean I wanted an opportunity to kill him!”_ _ _

___Villanelle scoffs “Oh please-” and then falls silent, and just stares truculently at Eve, who glares back, arms folded across her chest._ _ _

___After a long five seconds, Elena clears her throat._ _ _

___“Okay, we’ve clearly got a lot to unpack here, but…look, guys, can we just do this another time- I need to call Carolyn now. Priority has to be getting Eve from this building to another one. Do you think I could have some privacy to make this call?”_ _ _

___There is a pause._ _ _

___“Some privacy?” Villanelle asks curiously after a moment, echoing Eve’s thoughts with uncanny synchronicity._ _ _

___Eve snorts. “Are you planning on having phone sex?”_ _ _

___“No” Elena says, wearily, “but I might… have to be not my usual cool self, it might be a bit, you know, with the grovelling… oh just-” Elena flaps a hand, encouraging them away from her as though Eve and Villanelle are annoying children._ _ _

___After a small internal war, Eve motions at Villanelle._ _ _

___“Follow me asshole, there’s a first aid kit in the bathroom.”_ _ _

___….._ _ _

___The bathroom is suddenly slightly too small._ _ _

___Eve clears her throat._ _ _

___“So. Uh. Where does it hurt the most?”_ _ _

___Villanelle pauses, apparently digesting this ridiculous question, and then says “My throat. But a plaster isn’t going to help.”_ _ _

___“No…” says Eve, fighting hard to speak normally “Where else?”_ _ _

___Villanelle stares coolly at her for long second, as though deciding something, and then says “…My stomach. He kicked me here, although it was more of a shove with the bottom of his foot, to push me away.”_ _ _

___Villanelle hauls her top up as she says this, and Eve is presented with the flat of her stomach, the red bruising of her skin apparent where the would be assassin’s boot must have made contact._ _ _

___Eve clears her throat again, pointlessly._ _ _

___“That looks bad… have you brought up any blood?”_ _ _

___“Are you a nurse?”_ _ _

___“No, I just… its a sign of internal bleeding, according to the films-”_ _ _

___“I know- no. I haven’t.”_ _ _

___The scar is lower on Villanelle’s stomach, just to the right of the heel mark._ _ _

___The scar Eve gave her._ _ _

___Eve has never seen it before, and she finds that she is desperate to look closer, to touch even, but-_ _ _

___Villanelle drops her top._ _ _

___“And then I just have cuts, but it’s nothing-”_ _ _

___“Why aren’t you… just let me put a band aid on it will you, the cut on your mouth is still bleeding, and your face is a mess.”_ _ _

___Something about the moment seems to make Villanelle go very still._ _ _

___“I can do it myself.”_ _ _

___Eve ignores her, and opens the cupboard, rooting for the band aids._ _ _

___“Jesus, it feels like every time I see you your face is fucked up-”_ _ _

___“You should see the other guy” Villanelle mumbles._ _ _

___Eve smiles, more softly than she means to._ _ _

___“You are… a hooligan.”_ _ _

___Villanelle snorts._ _ _

___“I’m worse than that. And you know it.”_ _ _

___“I prefer hooligan. Hooligan I can cope with.”_ _ _

___“Mmm”_ _ _

___The wrapper on the band aid doesn’t want to come off, and Eve fumbles with it for a moment, clumsy._ _ _

___“Are you going to apologise to me?”_ _ _

___Eve sighs, and then laughs slightly, because hamsters on wheels must have less repetition in their lives._ _ _

___“What am I meant to apologise for now? Also you shot me.”_ _ _

___“You stabbed me.”_ _ _

___“You… did a whole bunch of other shit, jesus I’m not listing the greatest hits for you again.”_ _ _

___“You kissed me when I asked you not to.”_ _ _

___“Yeah? Well.” Eve juts her chin out, determined to not do anything that could be construed as embarrassment “Well how about that?”_ _ _

___“Mmm” Villanelle says again._ _ _

___It would be really inconvenient right now to remember in vivid technicolour exactly how that kiss went, which is exactly why Eve brain decides to replay the moment for her._ _ _

___Villanelle had moaned._ _ _

___“Okay” Eve says, rallying with an effort, worryingly aware of every fingertip. “Okay. So, uh, this is a band aid.”_ _ _

___Villanelle nods slowly._ _ _

___“Understood.”_ _ _

___“And… um. You need to put it on your… where you are bleeding.”_ _ _

___Villanelle stares at her._ _ _

___The bathroom is far too small._ _ _

___“Okay” Eve says, into the silence._ _ _

___She’d forgotten… the blood. The way that Villanelle looks slightly rattled, slightly unhinged, slightly too close…_ _ _

___To her own surprise, Eve is reaching out to Villanelle’s face, just millimetres beneath where the cut starts, below her bottom lip. She makes contact, moves away a fraction, and then makes contact again, fingertip on skin._ _ _

___Villanelle’s eyes… they’re _wide_ open. Eve feels like she’s in danger of falling._ _ _

___“You should… put the band aid on yourself” Eve says, chest heavy. “I don’t want to hurt you.”_ _ _

___Villanelle blinks, and then her mouth quivers slightly, as though almost smiling._ _ _

___“That’s…”_ _ _

___“That’s what?” Eve murmurs, aware that she has stepped closer, that the bathroom really isn’t _this_ small, and yet here she is, a bare handspan away._ _ _

___“That’s a dumb thing to say, considering how much hurting we have already done to each other.” And Villanelle’s eyes, they’re looking from Eve’s eyes, to her mouth, to her eyes, to her mouth-_ _ _

___“Are you calling me dumb?” Eve manages._ _ _

___“Yes. Because you are about to kiss me again.”_ _ _

___Eve teeters._ _ _

___“Do you… want me to not do that? Because last time you didn’t want me to, and then I did anyway, and I feel bad about that, so-”_ _ _

___“Oh my god” Villanelle breathes, rolling her eyes, and she reaches out to Eve’s shirt, and grabs a fistful of it, pulling her gently towards her._ _ _

___Eve kisses the side of Villanelle mouth which isn’t damaged._ _ _

___It’s an oddly thoughtful choice, and it makes Eve feel peculiar, as though this is a stage kiss, a pre-planned kiss, a simple show of affection rather than the lion roaring in her chest._ _ _

___She presses her lips to the undamaged side of Villanelle’s mouth, stays there for a second, and then leans backwards._ _ _

___“Um. Okay. Well, you should really, you know. Put the band aid on. Because-”_ _ _

___This time Villanelle leans towards Eve._ _ _

___The shock of it almost makes Eve step backwards, but Villanelle still has a grip of her shirt, and Eve feels tethered there, rooted._ _ _

___It feels like a song, like a chorus she has had stuck in her head for weeks, months, and now she’s finally able to sing it aloud, and Villanelle is singing it _with her_ -_ _ _

___She moans. Villanelle kisses her harder._ _ _

___Villanelle isn’t being careful at all, and Eve can taste blood, Villanelle’s blood, but she doesn’t care, she doesn’t care at all. Eve’s hands are on Villanelle’s shoulders, and then at her neck, and then Eve has wrapped her arms around Villanelle, cradling her head, pressing her whole body into Villanelle as though she trusts Villanelle to support her, to carry her-_ _ _

___“Do not kiss me gently Eve, we are many things but we are not _gentle_ ”_ _ _

___Eve chokes down another moan, and now Villanelle’s hand is _underneath_ her shirt, and rising fast, and Eve wants, oh so desperately-_ _ _

___Elena’s voice calls from the kitchen. Eve jumps hard at the first syllable._ _ _

___“Okay guys I think we’re sorted. Carolyn is sending a car.”_ _ _

___“Great” Eve says, far too loudly. She steps back from Villanelle, and stares hard at her. “Great. I’ll just. I’ll need to pack my things.”_ _ _

___Elena doesn’t answer that, and after a moment, Eve can faintly hear her begin to speak on the phone again._ _ _

___“I need to pack my things.” Eve tells Villanelle again, as though she wasn’t just here a moment ago._ _ _

___Villanelle nods, gazing at her._ _ _

___As Eve turns to go, Villanelle grabs her wrist. When Eve looks at her, confused, Villanelle motions to the mirror._ _ _

___There is a smear of blood on the side of Eve’s mouth now. It isn’t her own._ _ _

___Villanelle leans closer to whisper in her ear._ _ _

___“Now your face is a mess too.”_ _ _

___….._ _ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> slkjf
> 
> thanks for reading
> 
> @yotoob in the places
> 
> SPONSORED BY JUST FUCKING DOING IT, YOU KNOW?


	15. Very Reasonable Price

"So, uh, you staying here tonight?”

They’re standing in the porch of an unassuming looking terrace house. There are net curtains across the windows, and in the unsettling orange of the street light everything looks a little shabby, a little run down… but Villanelle thinks it would look exactly the same in the daylight too.

There is a pile of leaflets in the doorway, campaign materials from the election last year and takeout menus and desperate sounding adverts promising to replace all the homeowners windows for a very reasonable price.

 _Staying here tonight…_. Villanelle doubts that anyone who lives in this street wants to stay here. Faintly, Villanelle can hear shouting, but she can’t tell if it is coming from inside a house, or somewhere on a neighbouring street.

“Staying here?” Villanelle repeats flatly. Elena motions vaguely. “Staying. Not leaving. Here. With Eve.”

Elena coughs awkwardly under Villanelle's gaze, and then shrugs. "I'm not... you know. I'm not asking because I'm _asking_ , I’m just asking because I need to fill in a form about occupants and risk level etc etc”

It’s cold. The wind has increased in strength, and Villanelle tucks herself tighter into her coat. 

Elena is smoking a cigarette. Villanelle can’t tell if this is something that she regularly does, or just saves for special occasions. As Elena brings the cigarette to her lips, Villanelle can see that her hand is trembling, and it probably isn’t just from the cold.

“I forgot to say thanks.”

“For what?”

“In the alley. You did a good job.”

Elena glares at her briefly.

“I did a _great_ job.”

Villanelle nods firmly. “Sure. Yes. A great job. In between the screaming. Are you okay?”

Elena looks briefly at the glowing tip of her cigarette, and then nods.

“Yeah. I mean. I think you pretty much had it covered. I just, you know. Guns are not a regular part of my life. I can use Excel though. So-”

“And I cannot. I cannot use Excel, whatever that is.”

“Exactly.”

There is a small pause. A car rolls past them. Villanelle watches Elena as she eyes it suspiciously.

“Is the risk level higher or lower?”

“Hmm?”

"The risk level for Eve. Is it higher or lower, would you think, if I am also staying in the house?"

Elena snorts. “Risk of what, is the question..."

Villanelle grins. ”What about risk to me, why does no one ever worry about me? I’m the one who keeps needing medical support.”

“Well, the risk of Eve throttling you is currently sky high, I would say.” Elena taps the cigarette against the garden wall, and glances sidelong at Villanelle. “But who knows, you might be into it.”

Villanelle glares briefly, mainly because she _might_ be, but she isn’t trying to project that vibe in public, thanks.

“… do you have to stay here much longer? Do you not have a home?”

Elena laughs again.

“They’re sending a follow up car to collect me. Take me to Carolyn’s for a debriefing, which you can imagine I am wildly excited about.”

“Fine. You can tell your forms that I am going to stay here, and I don’t need any follow up comments on that.”

Elena doesn't seem particularly surprised about this, or at least doesn’t give any sign of disapproval. Villanelle resists the urge to head inside and check Eve hasn’t managed to get herself murdered. Villanelle has already checked the house once. Anything further will make it look like she’s worried about Eve, and that wouldn’t be at all acceptable.

“It was pretty fucking dumb to shoot her.”

Villanelle pinches the bridge of her nose.

“Yes… yes, I concede that point.”

Elena mutters something inaudible, and shakes her head.

“What?”

“I said, she’s pretty fucking dumb too.”

A car rounds the corner, and pulls slowly up the street until it is outside the house. The driver winds down her window, flashes a badge, and nods at Elena, who nods back, before turning to Villanelle.

"...She likes almond croissants. That’s as much solid intel I can give you on Eve. But where you are going to source an almond croissant from at this time of night is your own business. Now I need to go and speak to Eve to explain why I’m going to allow you to stay here, if she wants you too.”

"You are so helpful, thank you… wait, are you suggesting you could stop me?”

“Do you even _know_ what Excel is?”

“…No.”

“Exactly.”

Eve appears, before Elena can threaten her further.

"Okay, turns out that although the freezer smells like something died, there is nothing actually dead in it, so that's a relief. But this place is a fucking pit.”

Villanelle speaks before Elena can beat her to it.

“I’m staying here with you tonight.”

Eve opens her mouth to speak, and then shuts it again. Her eyes are darker than usual, in the street lights.

Villanelle tumbles forward into the silence.

“I’m not comfortable with how easily someone was sent to kill you, as it suggests that there’s a leak somewhere in Carolyn’s circle. This place is no safer than the last place, by that logic. If I stay then I can stop them, get some answers… useful things. And if I do that, then you won’t be dead. And also the sofa bed in Carolyn’s house is hell to sleep on.”

Eve turns to look at Elena, who shrugs.

“The way I see it, if she wanted to kill you, you’d be dead in Italy.”

Eve holds up a hand.

“She did literally shoot me.”

“Hello, I’m right here-”

“It was a tiny gun Eve, she might as well have thrown her shoe at you-”

“Are you _insane-_ ”

“Why would I throw my shoe-”

“Look, the logic is sound, and I can’t just pull an Mi5 approved bodyguard out of my _ass_ Eve, we’re on a budget-”

“She _shot_ me-”

“You stabbed her? I mean-”

“My shoes are really expensive, I don’t throw shoes.”

All of this takes place in five crowded seconds.

The driver in the car clears her throat.

“Are we leaving? I’m on a schedule.”

Elena rolls her eyes.

“Look, do you think you are safer here with her or without her? If you don’t want her to stay, she can get in the car with me. I’ll put her in a headlock or something.”

Villanelle glares at Elena, but she can’t muster much energy right now, because she’s starting to ache again, and she just really wants to sit down. Maybe Elena could put her in a headlock. She’s not entirely sure what Excel is.

Eve rubs her hand over her face, and Villanelle can tell that she is at the edge of her limits as well.

“Okay, but if you think you are going to find a comfy sofa bed in here you are in for a shock.”

…..

It is gross. 

At least it isn’t fresh gross, Villanelle decides, as she traipses around the depressing little rooms, which all have small piles of trash in the corners, ripped wallpaper, and stained carpets. Clearly no one has been in here for years. The house feels bone cold. Any germs have probably died by now, probably killed themselves, she decides wearily.

There’s no electric. Villanelle turns off her phone torch after a moment, keen to preserve its battery, and lets her eyes become accustomed to the faint glow filtering through the net curtains from outside.

There’s no bed. 

Villanelle probably wouldn’t have slept in it even if there had been a bed.

This must be an old safe house, nearly shut down. Carolyn must be at the end of resources just like everyone else.

She returns to the front room, where Eve has closed the curtains, and has somehow found a couple of candles and some matches. She’s placed two up on the mantle place, and another on the small, very broken looking microwave that it inexplicably placed in the centre of the room.

Eve glares at her, and then just says “Don’t.”

Villanelle swallows her automatic impulse to make a joke about how romantic the candle light is, and instead gestures at Eve’s suitcase.

“Did you pack anything useful?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know, like a better safe house?”

“No” Eve says flatly. “Did you?”

Villanelle pats her pockets, and then gestures at herself.

“I haven’t packed anything.”

“Great. Really useful. Again.”

Villanelle rolls her eyes.

“This isn’t my fault.”

Eve laughs.

“How is this not your fault? _All of this_ , is your fault.”

“We could have been in Alaska, I’m just saying.”

“Oh fuck off.”

There’s a silence. This room has a couch in it. Villanelle eyes it, balancing the probability that it is infested with rodents with the fact that she really does need to sit down.

She decides to let the rodents win, and sits down on it wearily.

“Look, less than three hours ago I saved your life.”

Eve puts her hands on her hips.

“Less than a month ago you shot me.”

“Less than an hour ago you were kissing me - you want to keep playing this game forever Eve? I did this, you did that, then I did this, and so on and so on.”

At the end of this announcement Villanelle winces involuntarily, because the pain killers are wearing off and the adrenalin has definitely gone, and now her head feels like she’s been punched in the face, because she has.

She sighs.

“Can we please just concentrate on getting through tonight? Sit down.”

Eve folds her arms, and then puts her hands on her hips again, shifting her weight from one foot to another.

“Uh. Why?”

Villanelle looks at her. “Please stop making me justify why you should do obvious things? My throat hurts. Sit down. Are you going to curl up on the floor? Make a nest in the newspapers? Sit down. If you have a blanket in your suitcase please give it to me.”

“I thought you were going to be protecting me” Eve looks like she realises that it is a dumb thing to say one second after she says it. Villanelle snorts.

“I will sleep very lightly, okay? Just… sit down. Please.”

Eve hesitates, and then turns away from her, bending down and unzipping her suitcase instead. 

“I don’t have a blanket, but you can have this?”

It’s an oversized sweater. Villanelle already has her coat on, but she takes it nevertheless, holding it out in front of her.

“Wow, this is ugly.”

“God, why are you so predictable.” Eve grumbles, hauling out another sweater from her suitcase, removing her coat, putting the sweater on, and then replacing her coat. She then sits down, somehow managing to do so in a way that screams _no feedback please._

Villanelle ignores her, choosing to focus entirely on the sweater.

“I’m going to put this on”

“Is it so bad you need to psyche yourself up for it?”

“Yes. But also. I’m going to put it on, and then I’m going to take my coat off so we can both use it as a blanket.”

Eve stares at her.

“I’m not sure we are in… snuggling territory, yet.”

“Yet” Villanelle repeats meaninglessly, sliding her coat off. “I know that, it isn’t a snuggle, this is to conserve body heat.”

“It’s pretty mild out for November. We won’t die, even though there’s no heating.”

“Can’t risk it though” Villanelle says quietly, and then hauls Eve’s sweater over her head.

“This smells like you.”

“That’s cause it’s mine.”  
“Whatever. Come here. Or don’t. Your choice.”

Eve looks like she is about to refuse, and Villanelle couldn’t care less to be honest, she’s that tired, but then Eve comes shuffling closer.

“Don’t get any ideas.”

“I have no ideas, my head is literally empty.”

Eve aligns herself next to Villanelle, and then, shocking Villanelle, she turns towards her slightly, and drapes an arm across her stomach. Villanelle rearranges herself automatically, wrapping her arm around Eve’s shoulders. 

“Don’t get-”

“I know, no ideas.”

“This is because I’m fucking cold.”

“This is about body heat, it’s okay, I read the memo.”

“Good.”

Villanelle leans her head towards Eve, resting against her head briefly, before relaxing back into the couch.

“You smell like you too.”

“That’s because I’m me.”

“Okay. I’m going to sleep now. Wake me if someone comes to kill you.”

“You bet.”

…..

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading
> 
> join me on twitter @yotoob for non stop fun and games
> 
> SPONSORED BY MIRACULOUS LAPTOP FIXES


	16. Budget Version

Eve wakes up to a horrible smell.

It’s bad. It’s really-

What the fuck-

She lifts her head up with a start, blinking in the early morning daylight. Immediately her back starts to complain, and then her shoulder. 

She’d been lying face down on the old couch. Eve briefly wonders if it’s possible to inhale an STD.

“Ugh, gross-”

“Good morning.”

Villanelle is sitting on the arm rest of the couch. Eve glares at her.

“You let me breath in couch? I thought you were supposed to be protecting me.”

“Mmmph, yeah I fucked up there. Here.”

Villanelle produces a takeaway cup of coffee. Eve pushes herself upright, and takes it gratefully. “It’s not good” Villanelle clarifies, “but it is hot.”

“Where did you get-”

“There’s a corner shop at the end of the street. I judged it to be safe to leave you and the couch alone - assassins are not usually morning people.”

Eve pushes herself into an upright position, takes the coffee, and looks around herself. 

They’re still in the safe house. It somehow manages to look even more depressing in the daylight.

She groans.

“What the fuck are we supposed to do now?”

Villanelle shrugs.

“I think Carolyn is hoping we both get killed eventually, we have been nothing but annoying.”

“Great” Eve says hollowly. She takes a sip of coffee, setting her face against how bitter it is.

“Do you ever… feel like you just can’t see a way out? I feel like I have no idea how to get things back to normal. There is literally no action I can take that seems a sensible first step to returning to my regular life.”

Villanelle makes an awkward face, as though tiptoeing around a touchy subject.

“Was your regular life working out well for you?”

“At least I was pretty confident I knew where I would be sleeping each night.” Eve remembers suddenly some of the events of last night, and looks more carefully at Villanelle. “How are you? How is… your face, and stuff.”

Villanelle smiles briefly, and then touches at her lip, where she no longer wears a band aid. 

“I think it makes me look dangerous. Sexy.”

Eve snorts. Villanelle grins.

“Come on, pack your stuff, I have a plan. Bring your little suitcase.”

“What, how do you have a plan?”

“I’m resourceful.”

“What is the plan?”

“We’re going clothes shopping. I’ve been through your suitcase and you have packed literally nothing that I can wear.”

“We’re going clothes- wait, you’ve been through my suitcase?”

“Yes. You have a really weird take on what counts as emergency packing by the way. What’s up with all the wet wipes? Have you been speaking to Konstantin?”

“Just…shouldn’t we go to Carolyn’s?”

“That’s probably the last place we should go. So we’ll go there last. Clothes shopping first. Oh, and we might need to rob a bank.”

…..

Eve’s suitcase wheels rattle loudly as they cross a cobbled street. She huffs, and swears when it gets caught on a kerb, hauling it up with difficulty.

Villanelle glides, and it’s annoying.

Everything about her is annoying, which is exactly why Eve made out with her furiously last night, and then fell asleep with her head on Villanelle’s chest.

Really annoying. Also. Things were… weird last night. Normal rules were not in play.

She fucking shot Eve. 

Eve remembers Elena’s comment about how Villanelle may as well have thrown her shoe at her, and clamps down hard on a giggle, because she’s fucking annoyed, and she got fucking shot and now it would seem she is about to take part in a crime.

“You know that… banks are pretty hard to rob, right?”

Villanelle turns on her heel and walks backwards for a moment, so they can have a face to face conversation.

“You know… I have been thinking about that. It will be too hard. I think I need to find someone who goes in to withdraw a great deal of cash, and then rob them.”

“Oh… kay” says Eve, very aware that people are walking past Villanelle and Villanelle is doing absolutely nothing to hide the fact that she is planning to rob someone. “Can we just… take a pause for a moment?”

Villanelle halts, and then Eve motions at a bench, wheels her case over to it, and sits down. Villanelle, with a great show of reluctance, joins her.

“Eve, we haven’t even completed event one of the day, you can’t flake out now.”

“Robbing someone is a dumb idea.”

Villanelle peers suspiciously at her.

“Mm?”

“You can’t rob someone. Partly cause I’ll feel like I have to call the police, and secondly it’s a dumb idea.”

Villanelle’s eyebrows bounce up in the air.

“You wouldn’t call the police.”

“No, I know I wouldn’t, and that is a conversation I’ll save for my future therapist, but I’d feel uncomfortable about it… also, it’s a dumb idea if we’re trying to keep a low profile-”

Villanelle considers this for a moment, as though keeping a low profile is a completely alien concept.

“But I have no clothes? I’m cut off from my usual resources. I need to regroup. And I need money to do it.”

“No, _we_ need to regroup.”

“Yeees” Villanelle says cautiously. “What is your point?”

Eve gestures at herself.

“We’ll use my money. I’ll withdraw it.”

“How much do you have?”

“In my savings? Nearly thirty five thousand.”

This time Villanelle’s eyebrows bounce up and don't come down.

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, I was saving hard for retirement… now I probably won’t reach retirement… and it is probably less high profile than robbing a bank, which I think is your back up plan.”

Villanelle tilts her head to one side as though considering, and then looks away, barring her teeth and rubbing the pad of her thumb over her incisor a couple of times.

“We will need all of it though. And I will worry about your retirement plans.”

Eve swallows.

“All of- what are we doing with the money?”

Villanelle shrugs.

“Staying alive. Eating. Sleeping. I need some clothes. Nice things, you know.”

“Have you heard of Primark?”

Villanelle grimaces.

“Don’t you want me to look good for you?”

“I-” Eve struggles for a moment, fighting a blush and future bankruptcy “But you know you look good in everything-”

“But I don’t feel good in everything, don’t you want me to feel good Eve?” Villanelle lows her voice to a murmur, and Eve gulps.

“Can we just… zone back in on the facts? Rather than…”

Villanelle looks away for a long moment, as though waiting for her next thought. Then she leans back on the bench.

“Here’s the plan. I’m open to alternatives, but…. I think Carolyn is feeding info to the Twelve. Or Konstantin is playing both sides again. Or both. Something is up anyway. We should go there, get the truth, and then go and crash the Twelve, and fuck shit up. Konstantin said there was a faction of the Twelve who were trying to grab power, and they will be pleased that Raymond is dead. We should go and help them grab power.”

Eve feels a little as though Villanelle has just announced her intention to paraglide to the moon, but she doesn’t want to explore something as mundane as feasibility right now.

“How can I help them grab power?”

“Thirty five grand can be very helpful, don’t underestimate yourself.”

“And… even if your Carolyn theory is true, how will you get the truth from Carolyn? I’m not sure she has ever told the complete truth in her life, she’s always got an extra hidden layer.”

Villanelle shrugs.

“I’ll improvise.”

Eve blows out her cheeks for a moment.

“And… is the Alaska plan not a viable alternative any more?”

Villanelle glares at her, which surprises Eve briefly, and she holds out her hands, questioning.

“What?”

“I do not like to talk about that time.”

Eve gapes for a moment.

“You don’t like to talk about … by ‘that time’, you mean the time that I got shot, but you are the one who doesn’t like to talk about it?”

Villanelle gestures around her, suddenly irritated with the busy street surroundings.

“I mean I don’t want to talk about it on a fucking bench, you know?”

“I’m not trying to talk about it, jeez-”

Villanelle folds her arms, but seems to relax by a notch.

“Okay, good because I do not want to do that here.”

Eve rubs at her forehead.

“Okay, let’s concentrate on the fact that I’ve just said I’m willing to withdraw all my savings for you… look, let’s just go to the bank.”

Villanelle brightens.

“I can buy some really nice clothes for thirty five grand.”

“You can’t spend it all on clothes.”

“But like…. half?”

….

The bank does not allow Eve to withdraw all her savings at once.

“But… it’s my money? And I don’t want it in actual cash, but if you could move it over to my current account, then-”

But no, the savings account is the wrong sort of account, the sort that accrues high interest and requires three working days and a meeting before money can be moved around.

Villanelle sighs heavily as they exit the bank.

“Okay this changes things. We can’t wait three working days.”

“Like I said, we absolutely _cannot_ rob a bank, or steal cash from someone, or-”

“How much money do you have available to you right now, in your regular account?”

“Uh… a couple of grand.”

Villanelle blows out her cheek, as though faced with the hardest challenge of her life.

“Okay. We are going to have to do a budget version of the plan.”

….. 

“I think I did really well.’

“Yep”

“I brought so many things.”

“You did.”

“Which is good because you told me to buy things in Primark. That is something you definitely said.”

“Mmm.”

“And it doesn’t matter that all these clothes are basically going to dissolve when I wash them, because by then three working days will have passed and you can buy me some expensive clothes instead.”

Eve leans her head on the taxi window. She’s tired. 

“And we couldn’t have walked carrying all of these bags, that would have been impractical.”

“Yeah. Impractical.”

Villanelle nods to herself briefly, and then lapses into silence. The taxi engine rumbles in the silence.

Eve looks at her.

“Where are we going? We aren’t going to Carolyn’s now, surely you do not plan on interrogating Carolyn while holding twenty three primark bags?”

Villanelle grimaces.

“Oof, no. No, I gave the driver Elena’s address.”

“You- wait-”

“I looked at her driver’s license when she was in the bathroom. It’s always useful to have the addresses of people who like me, I find, just in case.”

“So-”

“And she said last night that she had the day off today. She’ll be pleased to see us, I’m sure.”

Eve tries to imagine Elena’s face if they just turn up at her door. ‘Pleased’ is not even in the top ten of reactions.

“This isn’t a good idea.”

“Eve, we’re on a budget. I’m being thrifty. So we are going to crash at Elena’s tonight. She’ll love it. This is what friends are for.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading
> 
> yotoob on twitter, yotoob on ko-fi, yotoob yotoob yotoob
> 
> SPONSORED BY PET PASSPORTS


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